


Shall Be Vested

by Emeraldwoman



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 00:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 27,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1724396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeraldwoman/pseuds/Emeraldwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis just wanted to strike out on her own. Unfortunately, she lands in Washington, DC, ten minutes before three helicarriers fall from the sky.</p><p>Warning: WiP, with all that implies. Expect plenty of cliffhanging.</p><p>Post-Winter Soldier, certainly AU for AoU. Started out with a tight plot strategy and turned into Marvel character fruit salad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“I’m sorry,” Mrs Sherry said. “I have no record of your application.”

Mrs Sherry was wearing a crumpled jacket with a tiny red stain on the lapel. The hollows of her eyes were a purple so dark they were almost black, dark hollows in the woman’s brown skin. The wrinkles in her forehead looked as if they’d been scored there by a claw. Mrs Sherry looked like she would normally be a kind woman, the kind of person who would always have a smile for a stressed intern or a cup of coffee for a new co-worker who really needed five minutes and someone to listen.

Darcy thought Mrs Sherry probably was sorry.

Unfortunately, that didn’t help her much.

“I didn’t actually apply for a position; I was headhunted,” she said. “I signed the contract in London, and I took a photo on my phone, see, so there’s my proof of offer. And I’ve got my passport for ID and my proof of address” - a hotel, one she couldn’t afford to keep staying in without caving and asking Jane for a loan - “and I understand that you have to be careful, especially right now, but I really am Darcy Lewis and I really do have a job waiting for me, and if you could please just get hold of Mr Gautier he could tell you how eager I am to get to work on Congresswoman Jeffrey’s clean energy intiative-”

Mrs Sherry looked more alert. “Jerry Gautier hired you,” she said.

“Yes.”

“He didn’t interview you here. I would have arranged that.”

“No, it was in London. I mean, I was in London. We did the interview over Skype.” With Darcy wearing Jane’s best conference jacket on top and her own Hulk pajama pants on the bottom. Well, it had been 9pm, London time.

Mrs Sherry pursed her lips. “Let me just check on something,” she said. “Stay here. Would you like a coffee or anything?”

“Coffee would be _great_ ,” Darcy said, and winced at her own enthusiasm. “But, uh, don’t go to any trouble, I’m fine.”

Mrs Sherry nodded sharply. “Of course. Wait here. I won’t be a minute.”

She walked out, smoothing her skirt over her hips with fast, jerky motions. Darcy took the opportunity to reapply her lipstick and check her phone.

Jane’s latest text read _ru ok?? Cn get you out NOW!!! Jst call… Mkg progress e-r flux gnrtr_

Darcy typed _Everything’s fine_.

Then she looked out the window at the broken skyline of Washington DC. Three days after the Triskelion, and the dust hadn’t settled. There were still fires in the Southeast quadrant, and there was no river traffic. Too much debris in the Potomac.

Puente Antiguo had been a no-fatality incident; some bad burn injuries, but mostly a lot of smashed glass and a few badly damaged cars and buildings. London had cost a couple of civilians, a university library, a spaceship full of bad guys, and that jerk Loki, who Darcy didn’t plan to mourn any time soon.

Both times, Darcy had been in the thick of it, moving too fast to get scared, and thinking too hard to get sad. She’d felt way worse about New York; sitting in a hotel room in Tromsø and watching aliens crawl all over the skyscrapers while Jane silently tensed with every flash of a red cloak had been one of the most terrible experiences of her life.

And then she’d landed at Dulles International Airport half an hour after her estimated time of arrival. Ten minutes before three helicarriers had fallen out of the sky.

She’d spent that night in the airport, watching President Ellis address the nation “from a secure location”, and texting until her phone ran out of power. Then she’d come into the city to help. There wasn’t much she could do; no civilians to herd away from battling demi-gods; no spiky things she could drive into the ground to make the aliens disappear.

People had done this to themselves. 

So Darcy had donated blood and gleaned bags of groceries from the stripped bodega shelves and dropped them in at the food banks. People always forgot to donate shampoo. Washington was going to need a lot of shampoo. Then she’d checked into the cheapest hotel that had a room free, which was still fancier than anywhere she’d ever stayed before, even on Jane’s expense account. She showered and laid out her clothes and curled into a tight ball under the white sheets. From experience, she knew that the shaking would eventually stop.

The next day, she’d put the news on in the background while she trawled through the information that had been leaked online. Everything about Puente Antiguo was there. _She_ was there: _Lewis, D; non-combatant_. Tasing Thor didn’t count, apparently. There wasn’t much about London. S.H.I.E.L.D. - and/or Hydra, ugh - hadn’t known anything about London until afterwards. 

The worst thing had been finding Jane’s and Erik’s names on the Hydra cull list.

The second worst had been the file about Jane and Thor’s relationship. Darcy had read it for about twenty minutes, feeling like ants were crawling all over her skin. Creepy, voyeuristic ants. Then she’d muted the news anchor reciting another list of prominent Americans in Hydra pay, and opened the .pdf Mr Gautier had sent her about Congresswoman Jeffrey’s energy initiative, the one he’d thought Darcy would be perfect for. She needed to be ready for her first day. Mr Gautier wasn’t answering his phone, but there could be lots of good reasons for that.

And now she was sitting in the Congresswoman’s reception area with a blinking blue cursor after the word _fine_.

Darcy hit the backspace arrow with careful, even motion, until the message line was empty. _I’m ok,_ she wrote. _Don’t send Big Blond. At work for first day now :) Congrats on flux thing!_

Mrs Sherry was taking her time with that coffee. Maybe Mr Gautier hadn’t been around to answer his phone. The office wasn’t far from the Triskelion. Maybe they were drawing straws on who was going to tell the new girl her new boss was dead.

A couple of cops came in, looking even more tired than Mrs Sherry. Darcy nodded politely at them. She wasn’t always a big fan of the police, but it had to suck to find out that your Deputy Commissioner was part of a plan to kill millions of people.

The heavyset white cop stayed in reception. The leaner, darker-skinned one - Latino, she thought - went past the front desk like he knew where he was headed.

Darcy’s phone pinged. 

_ok if ur sure. Call me if you need anything I mean it_.

If Jane was spelling out full words, she really did mean it. Darcy smiled at her phone and looked up to catch the white cop watching her. She smiled at him, too.

He didn’t return the smile, or turn away from her look.

Darcy’s stomach flipped over.

They hadn’t identified all of the Hydra agents - that was obvious. Captain America and the Black Widow and the new guy, the one they were calling _Falcon_ \- they’d exposed a lot of them. Probably most of the really dangerous high-hitters. But there were so many people involved at all levels, and Hydra hadn’t exactly identified them all by name and social security number. 

She didn’t have her taser. There was pepper spray in her purse and a whistle attached to her key ring and she could deliver a decent elbow throw, none of which was going to do her any good against a man with a gun. Darcy looked at her watch and huffed, then stood up, shaking her head as if she were super annoyed at Mrs Sherry’s tardiness.

The cop tensed. His hand twitched, unmistakably, towards his holster.

There was a clatter from the inside office, and Darcy whipped around. The Latino cop was coming back, Mrs Sherry behind him. He was pointing at Darcy, and Mrs Sherry was nodding _oh crap_.

Darcy took one step towards the door, and was not exactly surprised when both cops drew their weapons.

“Get down!” they were shouting. “Hands on your head!”

Two men with guns, _not_ good odds, and Mrs Sherry might get caught in the crossfire if she tried anything, so Darcy sank to her knees. Her cheap pantyhose snagged in the carpet, and then one of the Hydra-cops was kneeling on her back and cuffing her while the other pointed his gun right at her head.

They were reading her Miranda rights, exactly as if she’d never seen a cop show, or as if they weren’t actually traitors to humanity who didn’t give a crap about anybody’s rights to silence or lawyers or liberty in general, and it was so ridiculous that she would have laughed if she hadn’t been so angry.

“You guys are _stupid_ ,” she said. “My best friend’s boyfriend is basically a _god_. Whatever you do to me, you’re going to really, really regret it.”

“Shut up, Hydra bitch,” the white cop said. 

And Darcy said, “Wait, _what_?” and tried to get up, and that was when the taser prongs hit her ribs.

As she convulsed into unconsciousness, Darcy had the brief and fleeting thought that she probably owed Thor an apology.


	2. Chapter 2

Darcy had been arrested before. 

Quite apart from jack-booted iPod confiscating men in black, some of whom she now knew were actually jack-booted iPod confiscating _Nazi_ men in black, there had been a couple of protest marches, one drunk-and-disorderly, and the time she’d been caught putting a nail polish in her bag at Pete’s Drugstore and Candy and her mom had called in the local sheriff to scare her straight. It had worked. Sheriff Galloway looming over scrawny, red-faced Darcy had been by far and away her scariest brush with the law.

Until now.

They took away her phone and her purse and her shoes. They fingerprinted her and swabbed her cheek.

Nobody listened to her explanations. Or her pleas for a lawyer, or a phone call, or for someone to just _call Jane already_.

By the time her clothes came off, Darcy had already resigned herself to the cavity search, which didn’t make it any more pleasant. The guard wasn’t rough - or too gentle, which might have been worse. She was impersonally, intrusively thorough, and when it was over Darcy had to say some very sharp words to her stomach to stop it from ejecting its contents all over the floor of her solitary cell.

Which was another thing. Why solitary? Why the paper thin orange jumpsuit and the freaking shackles?

Well, _Hydra bitch_ had been a clue.

Darcy rattled her chains a bit, just so she could say she’d done it later, then sat on the narrow bed, and thought.

“I think I’ve got it,” she said, several hours later, when she was taken to a small room to “talk about your situation”.

The man just stared at her blankly, but the woman arched her eyebrow.

“You looked at my file, right? _Lewis, D; non-combatant._ And you thought, huh, this chick was studying political science, and she just _happened_ to apply for the astrophysics internship? And she just _happened_ to be there when Jane Foster stumbled across alien life in the extremely godlike flesh? Well, all right, we can take one coincidence, but why would any sane grad student then go to _London_ instead of back to school, even if she got to have an intern of her own? Why would a smart girl put her own career on hold to keep working in a field she knows nothing about, for terrible pay and no job security?” 

The woman leaned forward. The man tilted his head slightly.

“And when she finally wakes up,” Darcy said. “When she finally realises, hey, I love my boss, but her job can’t be my job and her life can’t be my life, why does she choose to come to Washington DC - of all possible places - on the day that Project Insight was about to go live. Of all the possible days, why that one?”

She sat back and waited. 

Her interrogators glanced at each other.

Darcy waited some more.

Finally, grudgingly, the man said, “Why?”

“Thank you. Because my life, while interesting and exciting, is also cursed with this kind of bullshit, and has been for three years. I think everything’s normal in the desert, and BAM giant flame robot. Move to a new place, try new things, WHOOSH, portal in space and time. Try and get my career started with a promising job for a politician I actually like and-“ she took a deep breath. To her absolute horror, tears were prickling behind her eyelids. “Well, you know all about that.”

The woman flicked her eyes at her partner.

“It’s all stupid, stupid coincidence. Call Jane. Call Thor. Call - actually, don’t call Erik, he’s a bit shaky at the moment. But they’ll tell you that I really am just who I say I am.”

“Your name isn’t on the cull list,” the man said.

“And that’s bad?” Darcy would have thrown her hands in the air, if they hadn’t been chained to the table. “Why would Hydra bother with me? Jane and Erik, they’re the brains. I’m the gofer.”

“The gofer who’s been, as you point out, at ground zero of at least two encounters with hostile beings-“

“Which is another thing, actually. I didn’t make much difference either way at Puente Antiguo, but in London I could have done some damage. I mean, hey, I helped stop aliens from destroying _nine worlds_. Would a good Hydra agent do that?”

“Hydra doesn’t want to destroy the world,” the man said. “Hydra wants to rule it. A good Hydra agent would do exactly what you did - keep close to Dr Foster, observe her movements, work her way into a position of unassailable trust.”

“Which you don’t have any trouble assailing,” Darcy said bitterly. “Look, it’s a great theory, but it falls apart at the Washington level, because I wasn’t looking for an excuse to move here. I wasn’t looking for an excuse to move anywhere. Jerry Gautier read my paper about marketing clean energy to rural environments and emailed me with a- _wait_.”

The man smirked slightly.

“With a job offer." Darcy drummed her fingers against the table, percussion for the dizzy swirl of deduction in her head. "It’s not me, it’s Gautier. He’s not dead, is he? I thought he must be dead. But he’s _Hydra_.” She took in a deep breath. “You found Gautier, you told the receptionist to call in anyone who came looking for him, and when I did, ugh, so eager to get to work, _then_ you looked at me and saw the coincidence trail and it set off alllll the flashing red lights in your law enforcement brains.” She sat back as far as the metal chair would let her, then sat upright again. “But wait. Why would he-?“

The man opened his mouth, but the woman laid her hand on his wrist. She was looking at Darcy as if she were a half-trained puppy about to try a new trick.

Normally, Darcy would have resented that too much to perform on cue. But her brain was tossing one idea to another, creating sparks and connections.

“Okay,” she finally breathed out. “From your point of view, it looks like he was bringing me in. My plan was supposed to land half an hour before the cullings began; not ten minutes after. And okay, I get that. But _I_ know I’m not Hydra, so I know he had another reason to get me here, and I think it’s Thor.” She sighed. “It’s always Thor. Jane had to die, Erik had to die, because they’re too smart and dangerous to live. But Hydra couldn’t be sure Thor would even be on planet, and they needed a hostage - someone he might care about. Or if not a hostage to control him, at least something to distract him. Give him someone to rescue instead of thundering up the Triskelion and tossing everyone with a Hydra badge out the windows.” 

Darcy shook her head. “Can't keep Dr Foster alive. But hey, there’s that intern. He seems to like her okay. Grab the gofer.”

The man rolled his shoulders. “Was someone meeting you at the airport?”

“He said he’d send someone.”

“Right. And would it surprise you to know that three weeks ago Mr Gautier hired a storage container under a different name?”

Darcy shuddered. “Well, it wouldn’t surprise me _now_.”

“Would it have worked?” the woman asked.

“She speaks,” Darcy said, more snappily than she should have. The thrill of problem-solving was draining out of her, along with the last of her energy. It’d been hours since breakfast, and the tasting had taken a lot out of her. Plus, she’d never gotten that coffee.

“Answer the question,” the woman said patiently. “In your estimation, would Mr Gautier’s plan have worked to distract Thor?”

“Oh, no way. With Jane dead? Thor would be leading an army to Washington. He might look for me in the rubble, when he remembered.” She slumped. “I’m not important enough. It wouldn’t have worked.”

“Good to know,” the woman said, and shot her partner in the face.

Darcy screamed, but the gun was swinging towards her, and she was chained to a chair, and she couldn’t move no matter how hard she yanked on the shackles and oh god, this was actually happening. The gun was pointed right at her.

“Hail Hydra,” the woman said, almost kindly, and then an arrow sprouted from her left eye and she folded up like a crumpled letter.

Darcy stared at the bodies, and then the man in the doorway, and absolutely refused to faint.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing Darcy registered was that the man with the bow looked familiar, though she couldn't remember why.

He was wearing a pair of black jeans and a worn blue hoodie over a white T-shirt. The hoodie sleeves were rolled up to expose some serious forearms and a pair of wrist braces. He looked worn around the edges. He also looked incredibly, calmly competent, and she could have cried all over him for that alone.

“Keys,” he said, apparently to no one, but there was a blur and a crackling sound and then a younger man was standing beside him, a set of keys jangling in his hands. 

Less standing than _vibrating_ , really. The kid’s hair was dirty-blond - almost grey - and it flopped over dark eyes. None of the older man’s calm was evident in his intense gaze.

“Darcy Lewis?” said the older man.

“Yes,” Darcy said, putting her brain back together. “Hey, wait, you’re…“ It was at the edge of her memory.

“Uncuff her.”

“I could hold the bow,” the kid said, in an accent very familiar after a year in London. “And you could uncuff her.”

“You don’t kill people,” the man said, unruffled.

“Hawkeye,” Darcy said, snapping her fingers a moment before she realised her hands were unbound. The British kid was standing back by the door, idly dangling her manacles off one finger and smirking. “You shot Loki off that flying thing! Let me tell you, that was the highlight of my day, that day.”

The kid looked scornful. Hawkeye tilted his head. “Yeah,” he said, almost to himself. “Okay, let’s go.”

“No argument here,” Darcy said, and got up. Her legs were a bit wobbly, but nothing too bad. She carefully stepped around the bodies.

“Good calm,” Hawkeye said. “Keep that. This might get rough.”

 _This_ was apparently a detention and interrogation center in total chaos. There were at least two sets of police and suited people shooting it out with each other. Darcy heard “Hail Hydra!” a couple times, but mostly she heard indistinct shouts, and some screaming. And the guns.

They moved when the kid said it was safe, and stopped when he told them to stop. He whizzed back and forth ahead of them, that crackling noise and the occasional blur of motion the only sign of his passage. Darcy knew how to keep her head down and scuttle, hugging the walls, and she concentrated on that, trusting them to keep her safe. Hawkeye kept shifting his weight, eyes going everywhere, hands steady on his bow. He never loosed another arrow, but she could feel him ready to.

“Hydra?” Darcy asked. She was proud of herself for getting it out without her voice wobbling.

“It’s happening in a few places,” Hawkeye said. “Must have been a standard order, if they were ever exposed. Third day, if you’re not caught, start causing chaos.”

“How many places?”

“A few.”

“Are you always this talkative with people you’re rescuing?”

Darcy caught the ghost of a smile pass across his face. “Nope,” he said.

“Through the next door and then the gate at the end of the tunnel,” the kid said, appearing at Darcy’s elbow. “It’s open.”

“Give her the gun,” Hawkeye said.

The kid scowled, and pulled a pistol out of the waistband of his jeans. “Why can’t I-“

“No. You know how to use that?”

“Yes,” Darcy said, taking the gun. She’d got her permit after Puente Antiguo, but she hadn’t practiced for a while. They weren’t so keen on guns in England. She pointed the barrel at the ground and checked the clip. It was half-empty. Even so, the weapon was much heavier than the Beretta Nano she’d learned on. She’d have to be careful with the recoil.

When she looked up, Hawkeye was adjusting one brace. That same ghostly smile was tracing the corner of his lips.

“I could get another one,” the kid muttered.

“Why?” Darcy asked, the first time she’d spoken directly to him. “You don’t need this to be good at what you do.”

The kid actually went completely still for a second, his dark eyes wide. Then he crackle-blurred away again.

“Huh,” Hawkeye said. “Okay, let’s go.”

They got through the door and along the tunnel, which Darcy vaguely remembered from her journey in. It was much nicer to walk down it than be hauled along, nerves still jangling from the taser. 

No one shot at them, and Darcy didn’t have to shoot anybody. Hawkeye made the bow disappear as they walked through the gate into a little alley, so Darcy unloaded the gun. The clip went in her bra. The pistol itself, though… there was nowhere to put a gun in the jumpsuit.

“Here,” Hawkeye said, and handed her his hoodie. The zip strained a little over the chest, but she got it up, and put the gun in the pocket. Now she looked like a barefoot fashion tragedy in orange pants and a worn blue hoodie, but she wasn’t instantly recognizable as an escaped prisoner. 

Back on the street - and she was still in DC, so that was something - Darcy walked with Hawkeye. The kid was walking in front of them. His hands were flying everywhere: adjusting his hair; tweaking at his waistband; twitching at his cuffs. Then he went still all over again, focused like a hunting hound. 

Darcy followed his gaze. There was a girl on the corner, with dark reddish brown hair. She was leaning on the door of a black SUV and watching them, smiling slightly.

“Keep _walking_ ,” Hawkeye said, his voice suddenly crackling with authority.

Stiffly, agitation in every step, the kid did.

Darcy picked up the family resemblance when they were still a few yards away. Same pale skin, same dark eyes. Sister? Younger, or older?

“You were supposed to stay in the apartment,” the kid hissed.

“There was a high probability that you would need me,” the girl said. She had the same accent as her brother’s, but where he spoke in sharp slashes, her voice was quiet, a little dreamy. Darcy might have suspected chemical assistance, if not for the intelligence in her eyes. “And you do. Your car’s been stolen.”

Hawkeye muttered something under his breath.

“I don’t need _you_ to get a car,” the kid said.

“You need me to get the right car,” the girl told him, and opened the door. “This one.”

“Scarlet, is there a high probability that whoever owns this car is going to come looking for it?” Hawkeye said.

“No.” Scarlet’s eyes turned sad. “She won’t need it any more.”

“Good enough for me. Get in.”

“Um,” Darcy said, and they all turned to her. She thrust her fists into her hoodie to stop her hands from shaking. “Thanks for the rescue from hideous, many-headed death and I don’t mean to seem a jerk, but I think I’ve got it from here.”

Hawkeye grimaced. “That’s not a good idea.“

“Yeah, but it’s _my_ idea. I’m going to keep my head down. Go home, maybe be a barista for a while. Go to law school, maybe, if the economy ever improves, which after this it’s not going to. Oh well, barista for life. Everyone needs coffee, right? I need coffee.”

The kid looked highly insulted.

“You’d be safer with us,” Hawkeye said. Darcy was pretty sure he couldn’t do "gentle", but he was going for “quietly persuasive” with a vengeance. “Miss Lewis, consider-“

“I considered. I’m all done with considering, thanks.” She took a deep breath. “That is, unless you plan to make me get in?”

Slowly, without breaking eye contact, Hawkeye shook his head. “Your choice.”

“So. Right. Nice to meet you, bye.” She picked the left at random and started down the block.

“If you don’t come with us, you’ll die,” Scarlet said, her voice soft.

Darcy turned around. “Will I.” It wasn’t a question.

Scarlet didn’t look away. “Yes. In three hours and eighteen minutes. Maybe a little later. But it’s almost a certainty.”

Hawkeye grimaced. “Okay, yeah. Ms Lewis, get in the car.”

“Oh my god. You just said-”

“She means it,” he said. “She’s never wrong. And, yeah, now I will make you get in, because I’m sick of civilians dying, and you’ve got way too much guts to waste them getting spread over some hotel room carpet. So just save us some trouble, and the speech I think you’re planning, and please, Ms Lewis, get in the car.”

“Well,” said Darcy, swallowing hard. “Since you said please.”


	4. Chapter 4

“I need to let Jane know I’m okay,” Darcy said.

Hawkeye didn’t take his eyes off the road or his hands off the wheel. Darcy didn’t blame him. There were a lot of emergency vehicles blaring their way down the streets, probably to attend to those chaotic incidents he’d mentioned earlier.

“Silver, got a phone?” he said.

The kid looked up from his whispered conversation with his sister. “Maybe,” he said.

“Lend it to Ms Lewis.”

Silver handed it over, with a dark glare at the back of Hawkeye’s head.

Darcy had memorised Jane’s number well before everything in her life went haywire, due to a faulty contacts list and a deep-rooted prejudice against giving the phone company another cent. She tapped it in and waited for the international lag to pass.

“Who calls the lady Jane?” a familiar voice boomed.

Darcy held the phone away from her ear and grinned. “Hey, big guy. It’s Darcy.”

“Darcy! How do you fare?”

“Oh, good, good. Kidnapped, then kidnapped from being kidnapped. You know, the new normal.”

Hawkeye shook his head, but that ghostly smile was still there, so Darcy figured he wasn’t going to shoot her right then.

“Do you jest?”

“Sort of. I’m not entirely happy to be with the people I’m with, but it’s better than before. And I’m told that it’s a bunch safer to stay with them.”

“Your safety is important,” Thor said instantly. “But also your freedom. Shall I arrange your escape?”

Darcy thought about it. “You know one of them, I think. Hawkeye. From New York?”

“Ah, Agent Barton. A worthy comrade, Darcy.”

That wasn’t the same thing as _trustworthy_ , Darcy noted. Thor had thought his brother a worthy comrade, once.

She looked at her companions. Scarlet was watching the world pass outside the window as if she’d never seen a city before. Silver was watching Darcy. Hawkeye was watching the road, but something about the curl of his lips told Darcy most of his attention was on her.

“I think I’m okay for now,” she decided. “Is Jane around?”

“She is working on the flux generator with Dr Selvig. Shall I fetch her?”

“No, just… tell her that I’m safe. And I love her and everything.”

“I will convey your words.” Thor was so _sincere_. It was one of the things Darcy liked best about him, and also the thing that it was easiest to make fun of. “Please pass on my good wishes to Agent Barton.”

“Yep. Okay. Bye.”

“Farewell, Darcy!”

Darcy hung up and stared at the screen. She could have said, “Come and get me right now,” and Thor would have thrown himself off the nearest roof and come for her. She could have gone back to work for Jane and Erik, and they would have been delighted. She could have settled back into making coffee and Pop-Tarts, and occasionally making out with Ian, who she probably should text at some point. But she hadn’t said it.

It was a scary thing, to realise that one part of your life really was over.

“Thanks,” Darcy said, and handed the phone back to Silver, smiling. No harm in being polite, at least until it got in the way of getting what she wanted.

After a moment, Silver smiled back. He wasn’t a bad-looking kid, when he forgot to sulk. And how old was he, anyway? From the body, she would have guessed early twenties, but from the way he spoke, the way his sister looked at everything as if she was seeing it for the first time, she would have thought mid-teens, and young for their ages. Split the difference, and say-

“Nineteen,” Scarlet said absently, and then whirled to stare at Darcy in the mirror. Her cheeks flushed bright red. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to!”

“It’s okay,” Hawkeye said.

“You read my mind,” Darcy said blankly.

“Not exactly,” Scarlet said anxiously. “I mean, I can’t look inside your head. I don’t really know what exactly you were thinking, it was just that trying to work out how old we are was a high probability. I don’t do it often. I’m truly sorry, I really am! Please, please believe me.”

“It’s all right,” Hawkeye said. “Ms Lewis isn’t angry.” 

On any other day, Darcy would have told him exactly what she thought of people who spoke on her behalf without asking what she thought, but Scarlet’s eyes were now taking up about ninety percent of her face and Silver was practically vibrating through the seat, and _someone_ had done a real number on these kids, and she didn't think it was Hawkeye.

“I’m not angry,” she said. Not at Scarlet, anyway. “Twins, huh? Guess that explains the color coordinated names.”

“Those are our _code_ names,” Silver said. He was still glaring, but the murderous tension slid down a notch. “ _He_ calls me Silver. It’s Quicksilver.”

Darcy made finger guns. “Fastest feet in the west. Good choice.”

“Scarlet Witch,” Scarlet said. “It’s not really magic, though. I interpret and manipulate probability matrices through chaotic fields.” 

“Sounds very quantum,” Darcy said, nodding in approval.

Scarlet’s whole face lit up. “Yes! Are you a physicist?”

“Nope!” Darcy said cheerily. “Don’t understand the inner mechanics of space and time at all. But I know quantum when I see it, and when I do, I nod and say, ‘Yup, that’s quantum.’ You should meet my bo- my former boss. My friend, Jane Foster. She’s all into this magic is science and science magic stuff.”

“You know Doctor Foster,” Scarlet said. “You _worked_ for Doctor Foster.” From her tone, Jane was God, and Darcy had just been elevated to archangel status. Or at least a rank somewhere above the minor cherubim. 

“Mostly Pop-Tart maintenance,” Darcy said. “Not that impressive.”

Hawkeye snorted.

“Something to say, Robin Hood?” Darcy asked, voice definitely on the snippy side. All right, she was still a little mad.

“Not a thing, Ms Lewis,” said Hawkeye. “How’s Thor?”

“Godly. He says hi, _Agent Barton_.”

“Clint.”

“Darcy.”

“Wanda,” Scarlet said, beaming at them.

“Quicksilver,” the kid said stiffly.

“Rocky!” Darcy said. “No? Come on, guys, you’re killing me. Time Warp? Sweet Transvestite? Touch-a touch-a touch me, I wanna feel dirty?”

Wanda giggled. Silver, astonishingly, blushed.

The car was slowing down, pulling into a garage attached to an intimidatingly expensive apartment building. Clint waved a card out the window, and the barrier gate rose. Clint turned off the ignition, and Darcy felt her shoulder blades creep up her spine.

“Give us a minute,” Clint said, over his shoulder.

“ _Why_ should we-“ Silver began, and Wanda shot him a narrow-eyed look.

Darcy was impressed. She’d seen - and delivered - some good stink-eye in her time, but Wanda had some nuclear-level payload on standby. Silver pushed his door open without another word and meekly helped his sister out. They walked over to the gleaming elevator doors, Wanda whispering furiously at her twin.

“Good kids,” Darcy said, before Clint could say something reassuring or generous or anything else guaranteed to make her lose it.

Clint shrugged. “They’re okay.” There was, if she listened for it, the faintest hint of fondness in his voice.

“Sick of babysitting?” Darcy said. Her hands were shaking. She locked them together.

Clint didn’t say anything for a while. Then he popped his neck. “There’s ice-cream inside,” he said.

Darcy forced a smile. 

“And vodka,” he added thoughtfully. “Lots and lots of vodka.”

The knot in her spine relaxed all at once. Darcy unsnapped her seatbelt. “Oh, well, now you’re talking.”

No ghost of a smile, this time - she got the benefit of a full grin, with bright eyes and a mobile mouth. “By the way,” he said. “I don’t know much about your Pop-Tart maintenance skills, but you’re impressing the hell out of me.”

He got out before she could react, which was nice of him, because her stomach was turning slow, lazy circles. The man didn’t need a bow. He could just _smile_ at Hydra agents - at least the ones who were into men - and they’d all surrender immediately. Just roll over and offer up their throats, which was, oh god, such an attractive idea for any time when she hadn’t just narrowly escaped death. Twice.

Darcy took one more breath, and opened the car door. She made sure to stand by Wanda in the elevator, which didn’t help a whole lot, but by the time they hit the penthouse, she’d at least got her heartbeat back to something approximating normal.

As soon as the doors opened, Silver crackle-blurred away.

Two seconds later, he crackle-blurred back, dressed in an entirely different outfit. “ _You_ can call me Pietro,” he told her, and took off again.

Darcy decided she just wasn’t going to worry about that right now. “Vodka,” she said. “I distinctly recall a promise of vodka.”


	5. Chapter 5

After the third shot, Darcy said, “I’m sort of thinking about kissing you.”

Clint didn’t move, but his pupils dilated so fast that the black almost covered the green. “I was thinking about that too,” he said. 

“So?”

“Not a good idea. Right now.”

Darcy knocked back the fourth shot. “Roger wilco. Where do I bunk?”

* * *

She woke up twice in the night. First, to pull the pillow over her face and scream into it. Second to stumble to the bathroom. On the way back, she heard the noise from the living room. 

Pietro was sitting on the plush sofa, flicking through old sitcoms. He sort of stuttered when she came through the open plan doorway, then pretended he hadn’t. 

“Toss me the remote,” Darcy said. “Where’s your sister?”

“Sleeping.”

She nodded, and switched the TV to C-SPAN. “This place is pretty fancy, huh?” 

“I suppose so.”

Those senators still awake and in the city were talking about S.H.I.E.L.D. Darcy watched for a couple minutes, then tossed the remote back. Pietro didn’t change the channel.

“Nobody’s doing anything,” he said. He sounded frustrated.

“They’re scared. They don’t know what to do. Three of their colleagues were planning to help kill sixteen of them.” 

“Someone should be doing something. Hunting Hydra down.”

Darcy looked at him. “The police are on it. The feds are probably pulling 20-hour shifts.”

“Captain America could help. Thor could help.” He jerked his head at the hallway. “ _I_ could help, if he’d let me.”

“Thor could not help,” Darcy said, a little sharper than she meant to. “For one thing, he doesn’t have any jurisdiction here. For another, he’s not a real subtle guy. If there were a clear and present danger, then sure, point him at it. He's a good guy; he’ll take the hits and save the lives. But not every problem is a nail that needs a hammer. This isn’t an alien invasion. This is a whole lot of human beings who deliberately planned to straight-up murder millions of other human beings. We can’t get Asgard in on this. It’s something we have to solve ourselves.”

“But Captain America-“

“-could probably help, yes. Is probably helping. Just not on camera.”

Pietro’s jaw was set. He wasn’t pouting; he looked much more like a young man than an overgrown kid. “Can’t your government-“ He waved his hand through the air, oddly graceful. “I don’t know. Make some laws.”

“Yeah. They’re probably going to try that, soon. And it’s probably going to suck.”

He looked at her sharply.

“Good law-making doesn’t happen in a hurry, and it doesn’t come out of fear. Hydra spied on powerful people for years. Powerful people do not react well to paranoia. They start pulling out terms like ‘patriot’ and ‘invisible enemies’ and then _they_ want to start spying on people. For their own good, of course.”

“But if it would help…”

“Hydra had plenty of people in the NSA,” Darcy said, trying to stretch a kink out of her neck. “I bet they found the Patriot Act _very_ helpful.”

“So did S.H.I.E.L.D,” Clint said, behind them. 

“Speaking of unconscionable violations of civil liberties,” Darcy said.

“Speaking of them.” He came and sat beside her, so that she had a choice between feeling his warmth against her arm, or shifting a little closer to Pietro than would probably be comfortable for either of them. Darcy stayed where she was, because she was weak, and also because it was a little chilly. 

“Hydra is evil,” Pietro persisted. “Whatever we have to do to bring them down, we should do it.”

He wasn’t kidding; there was something inflexible in his mobile face. She was surprised he hadn’t already whizzed out the door and started cracking skulls. It wasn’t as if either she or Clint could stop him. 

“Is this… personal?” she asked.

Pietro nodded sharply. Then there was a wavering cry from the room where his sister slept, and Pietro vanished. 

Darcy should have shifted over, now that there was more room, but she didn’t.

“She gets nightmares,” Clint said. “And Silver doesn’t sleep well.”

“I wondered if maybe he didn’t need to,” Darcy said cautiously. It was nice, that Clint was trusting her with this information, but maybe he shouldn’t. The twins probably hadn’t said he could tell her, and anyway, it wasn’t as if she was going to stick around.

“He should. He just doesn’t.” 

Darcy didn’t ask why Clint wasn’t sleeping. She was pretty sure she knew the answer.

“He’s got a crush on you,” Clint said, voice low. She could feel his breath move her hair.

“I noticed.”

“He doesn’t… neither of them are great with social cues. You might have to be blunt.”

“You’re assuming I’m going to turn him down,” Darcy said. “Maybe I’m into younger men.”

Clint didn’t say anything.

“That was a joke,” Darcy said, staring straight ahead. “I make jokes.”

“I know,” he said, sounding a little bit sad. 

New topic. “How long have you been looking out for them?”

He grunted. “Six months or so. I was undercover, in a deep Hydra base. Got them out after the news broke.”

“So three days ago, they thought you were a bad guy?”

“Silver still isn’t sure I’m not.” She heard the thrum of his fingers against his knee, felt the jump of his arm. Her neck was stiff from not turning to look at him. “He- Wanda was dopey once she brought the walls down, so he carried her. He saw what I did to the people who followed us.”

“You’re being awfully forthcoming, Agent Barton.”

He snorted. “It doesn’t come naturally.” Something sharp poked her arm. “Here.”

It was a cardboard folder. The label at the top said _Barton, C. Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D._

“I printed it from the file dump,” he said. “I was in Puente Antiguo. Violating your civil liberties. I know who you are, Darcy Lewis. I’ve known for years.”

Darcy went rigid. 

“Yeah,” he said, and stood up.

“That’s creepy,” Darcy said. It was way more than that, way worse than that, but she couldn’t make the words come out right. “That’s… that’s so fucking creepy, oh my _god_.”

“I know,” Clint said. He moved away from the couch, very carefully not standing between her and the door. “It wasn’t… recreational. I was doing my job.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. Just following orders.”

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “You’re probably… I mean, I won’t stop you. If you try to leave. You could call Thor and-”

Darcy grabbed the folder. “There’s one of these on me.”

“Yes.”

“Is that your fault? Did you collect that information?”

“Some of it. I'm not an analyst. But when I was debriefed, some of my observations were analysed and entered.”

“Everyone can see it,” Darcy said. Her throat was clogging up. She was not going to cry. “My mom and my professors and every single person who might want to employ me or date me or have anything to do with me, they can all download that file and read all the things it says about me. My medical records. My psychological profile. My _significant associations_. My _poor impulse control_.”

“I know.”

“Because you were doing your job.”

“Yes.”

“And your friend, the Black Widow, she did _her_ job, and now anyone with an internet connection- And Jane's-“ Darcy slammed her teeth together and shook her head, hard. “And you give me your file. And, what, that makes it okay?”

“No,” Clint said, very quietly. “Nothing makes it okay.”

Darcy stared at him. “All right,” she said. “At least you know that.” She got up and walked down the hall, and knocked on the twins’ door. Pietro opened it, looking suspicious, but Darcy focused past him to the girl sitting up in bed.

“Wanda, if I leave now, will I die?”

Wanda hesitated. “It’s not very likely,” she said, with obvious reluctance. 

“Okay. Thanks. Good night.” Darcy closed the door again and leaned her forehead against it, trying to think. 

She couldn’t.

So she went back to the bedroom that had probably been Clint’s, and she opened the file with his name on it and started reading.

Twenty minutes later, she started taking notes.


	6. Chapter 6

When Darcy woke up, she was still propped against the pillows she’d mounded behind her. Her neck was wrenched to the side, and the papers from Clint’s file were spread over the comforter. 

The twins were standing at the foot of the bed, staring at her.

“Okay,” she said, sitting up straight. “Little bit Children of the Corn, guys.”

“ _He_ wants us to move,” Pietro said.

“Sorry,” Wanda said. “We wanted to know what you thought.”

“I don’t think right now,” Darcy said. “I have a shower and I drink coffee - a lot of coffee - and then I think.”

Pietro scowled. Wanda turned to him. “She needs clothes,” she said. “Go.”

Pietro went.

“Yeah, you’re definitely the dominant twin,” Darcy said, rolling out of bed. Her body listed a number of aches and pains, and pointedly underlined the item regarding unbrushed teeth.

Someone knocked on the door.

“See, that’s how it’s done,” Darcy told Wanda, and tugged the hoodie on. “What is it?”

Clint’s head appeared around the crack. He spotted the mess on the bed. His expression didn’t noticeably change, but Darcy thought she could read resignation from the slant of his shoulders. “Is Silver on another shoplifting spree, Scarlet?”

Wanda stared at her linked hands. “Darcy needs clothes. I’ll make the coffee,” she said, and slipped out the door.

“Like you can throw stones,” Darcy said, gesturing at the papers. “Or shoot them, whatever.”

“I’m trying to keep his rap sheet to the bare minimum,” Clint said. “I take it you heard the news?”

Darcy frowned. “This place isn’t listed in your hideouts. Do you think Hydra might find it anyway?”

“No. It’s a friend’s bolt hole.”

Darcy thought she could probably guess the friend. She had a long list of things she’d like to say to the Black Widow, and no illusions about her ability to get even a tenth of the way through it before she was rendered incapable of talking. The woman had definitely saved millions of lives, but had she really _had_ to destroy Darcy’s in the process?

“I need to get the twins out of the city,” Clint said. He scrubbed his palm over his hair. “We’re heading to New York. Whether you come is your choice. I understand if you’d-“

“You were planning to drive?”

“Yeah?”

“On how much sleep?”

“Not a lot,” he admitted. “Darcy, look, I know it’s not pretty reading-“

“I’m driving,” Darcy told him. “And I want this clearly understood - there are some laws I will not allow you to break.”

“Yes?” Clint said cautiously.

“Rules of the road. The driver always picks the music.”

Wanda stepped past him, both hands wrapped around a mug filled to the brim with something that smelled extremely promising. She got within four steps of Darcy, and halted, eyes bright. “You’re coming!” she said.

Darcy rescued the coffee and inhaled it gratefully. She had nothing to say against the Black Widow’s choice of beverages. “I’m coming,” she said, and looked out the bedroom window. 

The regular pattern of Washington was laid out before her. Beautifully planned, well-structured. Full of important people doing important things.

“I would have been really good at that job,” she said, mostly to herself.

“I think you’ll like your new one,” Wanda said. She gnawed at a nail bed, then self-consciously pulled her hand away from her mouth. “At least… it’s reasonably likely that you will.”

“Any ideas what it is?”

Wanda shook her head. 

“Well, then.” Darcy shot Clint a look over the rim of her mug. “Let’s go find out.”

It turned out the twins had never heard Pharrell Williams sing “Happy”. Darcy put it on repeat, and refused to let Clint touch her iPod until they hit Baltimore.

 

They stopped at a diner just out of Philadelphia for a belated breakfast. Clint rested his head in his hands, and appeared to be a beat away from sleeping. Darcy was betting he’d scoped every available exit point, possible weapon, and potential threat within three seconds from stepping inside. Pietro ate four burgers without appearing to breathe, and then eyed Wanda’s fries. She pushed them over to him without looking. Darcy wriggled her designer jeans-clad butt against the plastic booth, wishing Pietro had paid a little less attention to labels and a little more to comfort. 

There was a mixed group of teenagers in the corner booth, probably skipping school. Wanda watched them joke and shove each other around with a wistful look that tugged directly at Darcy’s heartstrings. Pietro looked once, then snorted and slouched a little further into his seat. His fingers tapped out a restless tune on the table, and then, when Wanda elbowed him, on his own collarbone.

“Did you guys go to school?” Darcy said. It just popped out. She didn’t mean to care, damn it.

“Our mother taught us,” Wanda said. 

“Reading, writing, arithmetic?”

“Calculus and physics,” Pietro said. “English, Latverian, and Transian literature. Art history.”

“Piano,” Wanda said, mischief suddenly gleaming in her eyes. “For me.”

“I can _too_ read time signatures.”

“Sounds fun,” Darcy said, and meant it.

The twins exchanged a look.

“Yes,” Wanda said. “It was fun, until the soldiers came.”

Darcy put her milkshake down, and barely registered the sensation of Clint tensing beside her. She thought it was the same sympathy that was gripping her throat, but his eyes had flicked up to the TV. A reporter was posed outside a cookie-cutter suburban home in Wichita, speaking solemnly into the camera.

“- provided crucial evidence in the prosecution of several key members of the O’Riley crime family. Entering the witness protection programme, Mr Daley lived for ten years in this quiet neighbourhood under an assumed identity. Six years ago, he married Katrina Bryant. Their daughter Maria has just turned five. But four days ago, when S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files were released, Mr Daley’s luck ran out. Gunned down in the early hours of this morning, while his wife and daughter watched-“

“Easy,” Darcy said, under her breath. Clint was so tense she thought he might break something. 

“He was part of something I worked on,” Clint replied, voice so quiet she had to lean in to hear him. “He wouldn’t… we normally don’t care what the Marshals are doing with Witness Protection. But he was working at a company we were looking at. Standard background threw up the signs of an assumed identity. Coul- my handler checked. Once we knew the score, it didn’t matter, but the file-“

“-S.H.I.E.L.D. kept it.”

“He wasn’t even involved. He was a bystander, Darcy.” Clint rubbed his temples. “He was a fucking footnote. And now he’s dead.” 

Darcy took a deep breath. It wasn’t oxygen infusing her blood; it was anger, fine and rich and deadly.

“You came for me,” she said. “Who comes for him?”

“No one,” Clint said bleakly.

Darcy looked across the table. “Pietro, can you drive?”

“Yes!”

“No,” Clint said. “If you’re tired, Darcy, I can-“

“Nope,” Darcy told him. “You need to sleep. And I need to plan. Pietro, can you really drive?”

Pietro chewed his lip. “Yes. But Wanda’s better,” he said reluctantly.

Darcy stood up, putting down a hundred for the waitress. “Let’s go, then. I want to get to Stark Tower before business hours are over.”


	7. Chapter 7

Clint refused to sleep, but he compromised on sitting in the back seat and half-closing his eyes. Darcy pretended not to see the glances he was shooting at her under his eyelids, and tapped away on the laptop he’d retrieved from the trunk.

It was heavy going. Clint obviously hadn’t grabbed all the files - there were hundreds of millions of them - but the cheap throwaway laptop was still barely chugging along under the strain on its data storage capacity. Darcy chose a few at random. Shady businesswoman’s secret mistress’s identity, shady mobster’s Cayman Islands account numbers, shady chemist’s home addresses. Darcy hadn’t clicked to the problem at first, because she’d been on the move anyway. By the time the info had hit the net, her file address was already out of date, and she’d grabbed a burner cellphone at the airport.

But most people were more settled than she was. Most people had places, people, lives that they weren’t willing or able to leave.

And some of them, like Samuel Daley, had every reason to fear exposure.

Darcy scanned through until she thought she had at least some idea of the risk factors, and used Silver’s phone to check online. Yep, the social justice networks were buzzing. Revenge porn sites were full of shaky surveillance footage. Stalkers knew everything about where their true loves were living. Gender identity outing had already got two dozen people fired. And the women who’d left violent partners, the kids who had run from abusive parents - they were talking to each other, supporting each other with love and anger and asking, always _what can I do? Where can I go?_

_What happens now?_

Darcy gritted her teeth, opened a new document, and got to work.

 

 

Stark Tower was even more impressive in person. Darcy looked up - and up, and up - and wondered why one of the wealthiest men in the world couldn’t fix a damn sign.

Then she worked it out. Hah. Cute.

Clint actually seemed to relax a little as they went through the door. The guards on duty in the lobby straightened up as they walked past, and Darcy spotted one whose hand wavered, as if he’d just managed to arrest a salute. They walked straight towards the back, and an elevator that was set slightly apart from the others. It didn’t have a button, or a keypad, or even one of those cool retina scanners. 

“Four for mine, please, Jarvis,” Clint said, to _no one at all_.

The elevator doors pinged open.

“Where are we going?” Pietro asked. He was twitching more than usual; Darcy thought that he’d spotted that almost-salute too.

Clint walked into the elevator. “My place. One of them.”

“Agent Barton,” a dry, British voice said. “Ms Potts has requested a brief meeting. May I redirect you to the penthouse?”

“Sure, let me just open my door for these three.” Clint seemed entirely comfortable with talking to a disembodied voice. Darcy squinted up, but couldn’t spot any speakers or cameras, so when she spoke, she spoke to the air, like Clint.

“Actually, I’d like to meet Ms Potts, if possible,” she said.

There was a very brief pause, then: “Certainly, Ms Lewis. Ms Potts would be happy to greet all of you, if Miss and Master Maximoff are not too tired?”

“We’re fine,” Pietro said, and leaned against the wall.

Clint folded his arms and raised his eyebrow at Darcy. She hugged the crappy laptop to her chest and didn’t bother being surprised that the British man knew her name. Stark had the best facial recognition software in the business; that was one of the reasons she was here.

“Oh,” Wanda said, sounding surprised, but the elevator door was opening, and Darcy didn’t have time to ask what probability she’d just divined. 

The red-haired woman walking towards them was impeccably made up, dressed in a Van Dyne suit that had probably cost more than Darcy’s tuition, perfectly tailored to fit the slim, architectural frame. The smile seemed more natural, though, and as Miss Potts got closer, hand outstretched, Darcy saw the circles under her eyes that even very good concealer couldn’t cover. “I’m so happy you made it here safely,” she said. “I’m-“

“ _Potts, V: possible asset_ ,” Darcy said, and shook the hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Miss Potts’ grip was firm; her eyes narrowed, and she held Darcy’s hand for a moment before she let it go. “You too, _Lewis, D: non-combatant_ ,” she said. “Agent Barton I already know. And-“

“Wanda,” the girl said quietly. She didn’t offer her hand, but she smiled.

“Quicksilver,” Pietro said, and didn’t smile.

“You’re both very welcome. Please feel free to stay for as long as you’d like.” She sounded completely sincere, and then she turned back to Darcy, calm and considering. Darcy stiffened up her spine.

“You wanted to see me?” Clint prompted, possibly out of an annoying impulse to rescue Darcy from her own mouth.

Miss Potts’ mouth thinned. “Yes. Tony’s in his workshop. He’s been there for… a while.”

“Ah. Yeah. I’ll get him.”

“Thank you.” She pointed him towards a different elevator, asked the kids if they wanted anything to eat or drink, distracted Wanda with a massive book on the Impressionists and Pietro with the TV, and sat down opposite Darcy at the shiny marble bar.

“That little dip in the floor is where the Hulk smashed Loki,” she said conversationally. “I had it polished most of the way out.”

But not all the way, Darcy noted. “Loki’s dead.”

Miss Potts’ eyes glittered. “Good.”

“Agreed.” Darcy opened her laptop. 

“I was going to offer you a job,” Miss Potts said. “You seem to be accomplished at minding eccentric scientists, and I could use people with those skills. But I suspect you have something else you want to talk about.”

Darcy nodded. “Miss Potts, in the wake of recent events, how badly are Stark Industries’ close ties to S.H.I.E.L.D. affecting your stock values and brand trust?”

Miss Potts’ face showed a very brief flicker of surprise before it settled into pleasant impassivity again. “Without offering specific numbers from our research team… badly.”

“And do you know… I mean, I’m sure you know something about it, but do you know much about how this massive information overshare is affecting people?” Darcy glanced out the massive window, at the island laid out in its grid pattern. From this high up, it looked so orderly. “On the ground floor.”

“Not as much as I probably should.” She tilted her head, stretched a little. “I’ve been somewhat preoccupied.”

“I’ve read your file, and you’ve read mine. But we’re basically okay. We were already in a certain amount of danger, but the kind of danger we were in meant there are people around who look out for us.”

Miss Potts nodded.

“But a lot of people on S.H.I.E.L.D’s watch aren’t protected like we are. They will lose their homes, their families - maybe their lives.”

“The police-“

“-Are in chaos. The Feds are too. The dishonest ones are running and the honest ones are working triple shifts trying to catch them. One girl in Tucson got a call from her violent, stalker ex-boyfriend nine hours after the files went out. She picked up her handbag and her cat and walked out of her apartment and to her local police station, and she waited there for thirteen hours before someone had the time to take down her name. The last message her best friend has from her is that she was getting on a train. She didn’t say in which direction.”

“That’s… not reassuring.”

“And in a lot of cases, the police can’t help anyway. I mean, apart from anything else, do you realise how many people just got publicly outed? How many mental disorders have been disclosed? You can get fired for being a different gender than the doctors said you were in 34 states, and no one can do a thing. It’s totally legal.” She leaned forward. “Which is why people were hiding these secrets. And now the secrets are out, Miss Potts. Letting them go was the choice that was made at the time - it might have been the only choice to make - and you can’t do anything about that. But you can do something about the consequences.”

“What do you propose?”

Darcy squared her shoulders. “Stark Industries provides the initial funding and employment drive for an NGO that provides counseling, relocation, identity creation, legal advice, employment mediation, interfacing with law enforcement - whatever. Emergency funds. The NGO would need marketing, human resources, a call center or three, and some way to search through those millions of files for people at special risk. Anyone named should be eligible for help.” 

“Anyone? A number of people in those files have - allegedly - done some very bad things.”

“Obviously the people guilty of criminal activity will have to deal with that,” Darcy said steadily. “But if they’re going to die for it, it shouldn’t be because they were knifed by a victim’s daughter who now knows where they live. It should be done according to the law.”

“You support the death penalty?”

“No.” Darcy looked at that dip in the floor. “But I’m glad Loki’s dead.” 

Miss Potts sat very still. Darcy would never be able to make her spine that straight, her hair that smooth. Who was Darcy Lewis, to be talking like this to one of the most influential women in the world, when she wasn’t even wearing makeup and hadn’t done anything to her hair but brush her fingers through it? 

“Yes,” Miss Potts said. “I can see the benefits for SI’s image - I can sell that to the shareholders. And you’re right; the authorities can’t handle this problem right now. ” She tapped her fingers on the stone. “All right, do you have a ballpark figure for your initial budget? Since time is an issue, I assume you’ll start work from within the building, but you can look for an independent location at the same time as you’re putting together your charter. And think about any personnel you’d especially like headhunted for the set-up. I can recommend some good people on the legal and financial side, but of course the final decisions will be up to you.”

“Me?” Darcy said. “Miss Potts-“

“Pepper.”

“- Pepper, I didn’t mean that I should run operations. I don’t- I thought maybe there’d be a place for me in marketing, or youth outreach or -“

“Darcy. I _have_ read your file.”

Darcy winced. “Then you know I’m not qualified for this.”

Pepper flipped her hand, palm down - not disagreement, just dismissal of an unimportant detail. “I used to work in the HR department. I’m still the last port of call for important hiring decisions at Stark Industries, and this is certainly one of them. I think you're capable. Moreover, I think you're trustworthy, sincere, and dedicated. I’m offering you the job. Will you accept?”

Darcy exhaled. “Yes.”

“All right, then.” Pepper smiled. “I have twenty-seven minutes before I have to place a call to Seoul. In the meantime, shall we get to work?”

Darcy was exhausted and rumpled and her whole body was lighting up with the fierce recognition of action. Finally, something to _do_.

She grinned. “Let’s.”


	8. Chapter 8

In 27 minutes, Pepper and Darcy sketched out most of a charter and the beginning of an operating budget.

“I think I have a crush on your brain,” Darcy said.

Pietro looked up from the TV, like a bird dog scenting the air, while Darcy froze in horror at the totally inappropriate thing that had just come out of her mouth.

Pepper just laughed. “Thank you. I’d better place that call to Seoul.” She walked off, perfectly balanced on her four inch heels, while Darcy doodled cats on the corner of the legal pad Pepper had produced from nowhere (“I like hardcopy for brainstorming; Tony thinks I’m doing it just to annoy him”) and glanced at the twins. Wanda was staring into the air, lips moving silently. Pietro was determinedly watching TV, the back of his neck dark red.

Darcy thought she could probably guess the cause of his blush. She hoped Pepper wouldn’t mind being part of a teenage boy’s sexploitation pseudo-lesbian fantasy. She sort of minded herself, but as long as Pietro didn’t _say_ anything, it was fine. You couldn’t stop people from thinking.

The elevator chimed, and both twins were on their feet. Pietro crackle-blurred in front of Darcy - oh, that was sweet - and she had to peer round him. Clint was the first person out, which made Wanda relax, and oh-

“Welcome home, sir,” said the British voice again, and Darcy yelped, mostly from surprise.

But partly because the world’s wealthiest man looked as if he’d been dragged backwards through a dumpster, and then used to mop up an oil spill. Clint had a firm grip on his arm, which might have been the main thing keeping him upright.

“Oh, hey,” Tony Stark said. “There are people here. But not Pepper. Where’s Pepper?” He shook Clint off like a scummy blanket and took a couple of weaving steps into the room, peering around like a naked mole-rat emerging from the earth.

“She’s calling Seoul,” Darcy said, tugging Pietro out of the way. He stepped reluctantly to the side. 

“Hn?”

“Seoul, Stark,” Clint said. “Come on, you need to take a shower.”

Stark shrugged. “Showers are for the weak. Like sleep, and fresh air, and… you know. Other stuff.”

“Your witty banter has seriously degraded,” Clint said. “I’m taping this, and then I’m showing it to Rogers. Shower and sleep.”

“Rogers,” Stark said darkly, “can kiss my filthy ass. And so can Natalie.”

“Natasha.”

“No, no. She earned Natasha with New York. Now she’s Natalie again.” He wandered to the bar and rooted around in it, finally extracting a bottle that was probably older than Darcy. “Drink?” he said, waving it in her general direction. 

“No, thanks,” Darcy said, crossing her ankles and wishing, once again, that she was wearing something more fitting to her new job. Not that it mattered. Stark hadn’t come closer than three feet to her, but close enough that she knew he smelled like a dumpster, too. After a heatwave.

“Drink?” Stark said to Pietro.

“Underage,” Clint said, very firmly.

Pietro looked as if he couldn’t decide who to be more disgusted with. He settled for a general purpose snort and stalked back to his sister, who was watching the byplay with huge eyes.

“Jarvis, isn’t the daycare on the twelfth floor? Never mind, I don’t care.” Stark took a slug from the bottle, and then another step towards Darcy. His eyes raked over her, almost absent-mindedly. “Are you my new assistant?”

“I’m the CEO of Stark Industries’ new charity initiative,” Darcy said, throwing her shoulders back. Pepper Potts thought she was capable.

“What?” Clint said.

“What?” Stark said, in a completely different tone. He picked up the legal pad, and wow, he was way too close to her now. Darcy held her breath and tried not to look too disgusted. “What is this?”

“A charter. The beginnings of one. Our aim is to-“

“No, what’s this, this big number, the one with the dollar sign?” Stark pointed at the dollar sign, as if he wasn’t sure Darcy would know what that was.

“That’s her initial operating budget,” Pepper said, voice calm and clear. Her heels clicked a definite beat across the polished floor, and she leaned across the bar, neatly plucking the legal pad from his fingers. “Tony, it’s been four days. We can discuss the Rescue project once you get some sleep.”

He squinted at her, and Darcy could actually see the moment where he decided to be an asshole. “Gee, Pep. Don’t you usually try to _stop_ me throwing money at cute girls with big tits?”

Darcy had time to suck air in through her gritted teeth, time to observe Pepper’s narrowed eyes and Clint’s clenching fist, time to half-turn towards where Pietro had been, and then every liquor bottle in the place exploded.

Darcy landed on the couch before she knew she’d been picked up, and Pietro was pressing Tony Stark against the wide window that was very, very high above the ground.

“You don’t talk to her like that,” Pietro said.

“Pepper?” Stark said, his voice remarkably calm.

“I’m okay,” Pepper said. She was crouching under the bar, out of Starks’s sightline. Darcy could see a small line of red scratched over one perfect cheekbone, but if Pepper wasn’t going to mention it, neither was she.

Pietro’s hands shivered, and Stark blurred, and the glass behind him cracked.

Clint had an arrow notched and pointed at Pietro’s back.

“Speedster,” Stark said. “Interesting. How do you breathe when you go that fast?”

Wanda’s hands were glowing soft pink.

“Apologise to Darcy,” Pietro said.

Pepper winced, and Tony Stark opened his stupid fucking mouth again and Darcy launched herself over the couch.

“Okay!” she said, stalking towards the window, and not incidentally fouling Clint’s shot. “That’s your endgame, Silver? You want an apology for me, and if you don’t get it, what?”

“He’ll find out what,” Pietro said, and his hands shivered again.

“So let’s be clear about this,” Darcy said. “You’re going to kill a man for being rude to me.”

Pietro did his weird stutter-motion, and met her eyes for the first time. “I-“

“Do you want to think about that for a second?” Darcy said, her voice absolutely flat. “Because if he doesn’t apologize, your choices are backing down, or attempting murder. At which point, Clint tries to shoot you, and Wanda tries to zap him, and your absolute best case, Pietro, your most favorable outcome, is that you and your sister are on the run in unknown territory, and a whole pack of dangerous people baying for your blood. Which do you think I value more: an apology from this idiot; or you and Wanda safe?”

Pietro flinched. 

“It’s the second one, you meathead,” Darcy said. She was suddenly very tired. “God. Put him down.”

Stark staggered forward, and Pietro blinked over to the other side of the room, and pushed his sister behind him. His eyes were moving over everything. “We’ll leave,” he said carefully. “We’ll leave now, and we won’t cause any damage if you don’t come after us.”

Darcy looked at Clint.

“Leave?” Stark said, straightening up. “You just got here. There’s like… 300 apartments with no one in them, it’s a waste. Jarvis, how many apartments free?”

“316, sir,” the British voice said.

“There, you see? Stay, have an apartment. Have two.”

Pietro stared. “I was going to kill you,” he said.

“Nah. Come on, you think I don’t know what it looks like when someone’s trying to kill me? Happens every second week.” He peeked under the bar. “All clear, Pep? Tell the kid - every second week, right?”

“Sometimes more often,” Pepper said dryly. “When he’s been particularly irritating.” She stood up, and Stark’s eyes narrowed when he saw the cut on her cheek. Then she placed her hand on his wrist and smiled at him, and he huffed out a sigh.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m going to bed. You stay.” And he walked towards the private rooms, hand in hand with Pepper, glass crunching under their shoes.

Darcy retrieved her legal pad and stared at the number with the dollar sign. “Would you really have shot him?” she asked, without looking at Clint. 

“Wouldn’t have had to,” Clint said. “Stark has more self-defence hardware built into this place than a helicarrier.” He’d made the bow disappear again. “CEO of the Rescue project, huh?”

“That’s what Pepper calls it,” Darcy said. “I’ll want something different for the press.” She turned to look at the twins, who were still huddled near the door. Pietro’s hands were shaking.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You didn’t do it,” Darcy told him. “Wanda, honey, do you need a hug?”

Wanda flowed around her brother and right into Darcy’s arms, where she clung like a nervous limpet. “I could have done something,” she whispered in Darcy’s ear. “But I could see all the probabilities, and everything I could do ended badly. So badly. And then you climbed over the couch and talked and everything got better. You make things better.”

“Yeah,” Clint said, and met Darcy’s eyes over Wanda’s shoulder. “And starting tomorrow, she gets paid for it.”

“That’s right,” Darcy said. “Gainfully employed at last.” Wanda stepped back, wiping her eyes, and Darcy looked down at her outfit. “But this isn’t going to work. Tomorrow, we go shopping.”

“We?” Pietro said cautiously.

Darcy had meant she and Wanda, but Pietro still couldn’t look her in the eye. “All of us,” she said. “Pietro, I am going to introduce you to the wonderful world of exchanging money for goods and services.”

He looked up. “All right,” he said, and flashed that small, contained smile. “Sounds fun.”


	9. Chapter 9

Darcy slept late, and woke breathless to the ringing sound of silence.

Her heart was beating too fast. She lay in bed and spoke sternly to it until it assumed a more natural rhythm, then, for lack of better choices, dressed in the same designer jeans and burgundy V-neck top Pietro had acquired. He had a good eye for colour.

Her apartment - her own apartment, rent-free as part of her salary package - was far too quiet, and she found herself scuffing her feet and coughing. It didn’t help, until the doorbell rang, and Clint was there.

He looked good, Darcy decided. Unfairly good, in his T-shirt and jeans and fresh-shaved skin. Undeniably solid and present.

“Shopping?” he said, and Darcy caught the valiant attempt to not look down her top.

“It occurred to me that I have no money,” she said.

Clint flicked his fingers, and a black card appeared between them. “Compliments Stark,” he said. “It’s pretty much the closest thing he does to an apology.”

Darcy grabbed the card. “I should feel bad about this. Let’s max it out. Where are the twins?”

“Wanda had a bad night,” Clint said. “I’m not sure if-“

“We’re coming,” Pietro said, appearing behind him. He looked his usual mix of affronted and wary; much better than the sick guilt he’d been marinading in yesterday. “Ten minutes.” He blurred away, and then back. “Twenty minutes. Wanda washed her hair.”

“Coffee, then,” Darcy said, and headed for the kitchen. There was nothing in the fridge, but the pantry basics were there, including a small tin of very promising smelling coffee grounds. She measured them into the filter, painfully aware of Clint’s presence at her back, the small hitch in his breathing when she reached up to grab the mugs. When she turned around, he placed his hands on the bench, one on either side of her waist, bracketing her between them.

He was so close she could make out the tiny wrinkles around his eyes, the faint scar at the corner of his lip. 

“Is this okay?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Darcy said, and kissed him.

He made a small, urgent noise in his throat and kissed her back. His mouth was toothpaste fresh and his lips firm, and she leaned back against the bench, making him chase her. He followed eagerly, trailed his lips down her throat to her collarbone, and pulled back with a sigh.

“It sort of seems like you’re sticking around,” he said.

“Seems like,” Darcy said, a little more breathless than she’d prefer.

“Then can I- I’d like a chance to try this. If it’s okay with you.”

“Agent Barton,” Darcy said. “Are you asking permission to _woo_ me?”

His eyes were warm and serious, defying the lightness of her tone. “Yeah.”

Darcy ducked her head. “Little serious, don’t you think? You’ve only known me-“ and then the words stuck in her throat. She’d only known _him_ for two days.

 _I know who you are, Darcy Lewis,_ he’d said. _I’ve known for a long time_.

And, _You’re impressing the hell out of me_. Apparently, she’d been doing that for a while.

Something must have passed across her face. He pulled back immediately; dropped his arms and got out of her space.

“You are really good at reading cues,” she said, while her brain kept working. “Must help with the spying.”

“If I’m freaking you out, I can-“

“No. I mean, a little, maybe. I don’t know.” It came out as nearly a wail. “I don’t know anything. The whole world is crumbling and I talked myself into a job I’m not sure I can handle and I-“ Darcy inhaled. “Can I think about it? I mean, I will think about it, no worries there, but can you wait on an answer?”

“Sure.”

Just sure. Not, _yes, I will wait forever_ , or _no, I need to line up my next best chance_. She could live with _sure_.

“We’ve got fourteen minutes,” Clint said. “Tell me about the job.”

 

 

Shopping with the twins was educational. They were totally immune to the cheap posters and outsize jewellery at the kiosk that would have been Darcy’s instant draw at their age, but gaped at the Porter House New York menu. 

“Grass-fed beef?” Pietro puzzled. “What else would cows eat?”

“You don’t want to know,” Clint said, which started an in-depth - and surprisingly passionate - argument on government-assisted farming programs in the Mid-West, during which Clint’s slight accent got intriguingly stronger. After breakfast - not beef-based - he refused to compromise his ability to defend them by holding bags, which Darcy had to concede was sensible, but it meant frequent trips back to the parking building. At least her wardrobe was growing.

Wanda regarded the H&M and Armani Exchange with equal mild interest, but had to be shepherded out of the Swarovski store when the stones started forming patterns. Then she developed an attraction to a fish tank, following the apparently random circles of the inhabitants with wide, fascinated eyes. 

“Where’s Pietro?” Darcy said, and Clint’s eyes swept the gallery, but Wanda pointed without taking her eyes off the clownfish, and Darcy found him in the game store, disdainfully watching a pair of boys with Delta Kappa Epsilon rugby jerseys and six hundred dollar haircuts dispatch dusty “terrorists” in headscarves.

“Terrorists don’t look like that,” he said, pointing at the red info bars above each snarling face.

“No colour coding,” Darcy agreed. The Hydra woman who’d been about to shoot her had looked extremely normal. Afterwards, she’d looked extremely normal, but with an arrow in her eye. And then there was Alexander Pierce, the man whose diplomatic brokering she’d written two enthusiastic papers about, the man who’d _refused a Nobel Prize_ -

One of the Dekes sneered. “Social justice warriors,” he mumbled, just loud enough to hear. “Laaame.” 

The other boy snickered.

Pietro probably didn’t get the meaning, but the tone was clear enough. He bristled. Then he shot Darcy a careful glance and took a step backwards.

She grinned, and nudged him with her shoulder. “Let’s go back to Stark Tower,” she said, loud and clear. “The clientele here is definitely grain-fed.”

The snickerer made an indignant noise, but the talker managed to get his eyes off her boobs and onto her face. Darcy’s heart kickstarted as the recognition dawned.

“Hey, you’re one of Thor’s girls!”

“Not actually my name,” Darcy said, before she could stop herself.

“You are! Um, not the professor, the other one. The intern. Darcy Lewis!” He snapped his fingers excitedly.

Well, that was creepy. Darcy caught Pietro’s eye and tilted her head at the door. She got two steps in the right direction before Talker grabbed at her arm.

She spun around, fist half-raised. If she’d had her taser, she would have zapped him on the spot.

“Wait, you’re working at Stark Tower?” he said, while she tried to fight the reaction down, tried not to set Pietro on him, tried to get her breathing under some sort of control before she started shouting or crying or just kicked this asshole in all the soft places she could reach-

“We’re leaving,” Clint said behind her, and she exhaled.

“Holy shit, it’s Hawkeye. Man, I gotta get a picture.” Talker was fumbling with his phone. “Holy shit, no one’s going to believe I met-”

“Sorry, sir,” Clint said, so smoothly that Darcy knew he was aching to punch the guy too. “No photos. National security reasons.” The snickerer had been faster with his phone, and Darcy marched over to pluck it from his hand.

“Unfortunately, we need to requisition this,” she said, pleased with the bland evenness of her voice. “Avengers business.”

Snickerer looked like he might be contemplating an objection, but Talker nodded. “You got it, ma’am,” he said, all clean-cut enthusiasm and serious eyes. This was probably the face his Econ professors saw shining at them from the wooden lecture hall rows. His extremely normal, not at all threatening face.

 

 

The twins were subdued on the way back, and Darcy could have cheerfully beaten Talker for that alone. They got off the elevator a floor before her own - she had the vague impression they had the apartment directly below hers - leaving Clint and she in the elevator together.

“It’s probably not a good idea to go out without an armed escort,” Clint said.

“I got that,” Darcy told him, and gathered up as many of her bags as she could unreasonably manage. Clint grabbed the rest of the pile, and walked beside her. The door opened to her voice alone, and she tossed the bags onto the neatly polished kitchen floor. 

Then she put Snicker’s phone on the shiny marble bench and smashed it to clattery plastic bits with a frying pan.

“And maybe look into some therapy?” Clint suggested.

Darcy tried to pin him to the wall with a glare. Clint’s file had been ruthlessly clear about his difficult relationship with the SHIELD psychiatric team, but he didn’t even have the grace to drop his gaze and shuffle.

“I don’t know, Barton, that looked plenty therapeutic to me,” Tony Stark said. He was sitting on Darcy’s sofa, at Darcy’s coffee table, and okay, he owned the entire actual building but there was no point in offering someone a place to live and work if you then meant to invade their privacy whenever you felt like it, especially when they had just had their privacy and sense of security permanently and very publicly violated, and casual reminders of this catastrophic event could occur on something as simple as an attempt to acquire some clean underwear and a pair of comfortable business shoes that didn’t look like something a nun might wear.

Darcy explained this point.

At length.

By the time she was done, Clint was rubbing the crease between his eyebrows in an unsubtle attempt to hide his concern, and Tony Stark was grinning wildly at her.

“I was gonna introduce you to your new database search and cross-referencing system,” he said. “Wanted it to be a surprise. Next time I’ll knock.”

“I feel like the word ‘sorry’ was trying very hard to be included in that sentence, and got left behind at the last moment,” Darcy said, but by this point she’d noticed the thing Tony had put _on_ her coffee table. It looked like a thick pane of glass, with blue text and symbols swimming within it, occasionally rising to the surface before they dropped again into the pool of available data. Stark Industries liquid paper applications were the envy of the geek-friendly world.

Her fingers itched.

And Tony knew it. His eyes gleamed.

“All right,” she said. “Since you’re here anyway, you can show me the system.”

“That’s the spirit! Also, if you change your mind about therapy, I know a guy.”

Clint sighed. “For the thousandth time, Tony, Banner is not a therapist.”

Tony waved this away, and beckoned Darcy over. “All right, padawan: data mining SHIELD files; how to hate the man and find his victims in three easy steps. We ready to go?”

Darcy laughed. She couldn't help it. He was so ludicrously charming, and so clearly aware of his charm.

He gave her the finger guns. “Excellent attitude, I like it, laughter while we learn. Step one: meet Jarvis.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fraternity absolutely not chosen at random.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My god, y'all, even for me this is a whole bunch of dialogue.

Jarvis was not a British guy Tony Stark paid to greet him and Pepper and pass on messages.

JARVIS was an A.I.

“Well, how did you think I got everything done?” Tony asked, whizzing his fingers over the tablet’s surface.

“I thought you had Pepper Potts,” Darcy explained.

“Hah! Yeah, well. Jarvis is almost as efficient.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jarvis intoned. “Your evaluation of my capabilities touches my emotional libraries.”

“I swear I didn’t program sarcasm,” Tony told Darcy. “Remember that. When we have to overcome the robot revolution, you can say it at my subsequent trial. Okay, let me see you use this.”

“Sorry. Unlike you super types I can only handle one crisis at a time.” Darcy copied Tony’s motions, and a half dozen screens leapt to life. “Oooh, this is cool. Okay, Jarvis, you data-mined the files for red flags?”

“As per Mr Stark’s list.”

“Which is- oh, thanks. Hrm, okay, good start.”

“Good start,” Tony muttered. “That’s a weird way to pronounce ‘thank you, Tony, in six hours you put together a program capable of processing and crawling through nearly a billion folders of obtuse spymonkey material-’”

Darcy ignored him. “Jarvis, can you pick out the files of anyone who is currently under 18? Priority flag anything with pictorial or video evidence of sexually suggestive material.”

“Certainly, Ms Lewis.”

“- most of it scanned from typewritten _paper files_ -“

“- anything that indicates someone is keeping their gender identity on the down low. Low priority for people who are out to family and employers, high priority for people-”

“- subjected to a variety of hackhanded encryption programs -“

“- let me see the list of mental disorders again - ugh, I can’t believe S.H.I.E.L.D. lifted all these therapy notes - okay, when we make the list of people to reach out to, bump people with current or recent depressive disorders higher up. Anybody who has depression co-morbid with anxiety, bump waaaay up.”

“Can you be more precise, Ms Lewis?”

“- badly translated - “

“- sort into four priority groups. Maybe five, if we need to-“

“- and poorly spelled.”

“Thank you, Tony,” Darcy said, and cracked her neck. “This is a shitload of names.” 

Tony leaned over her shoulder. “A fuckton. That is definitely a fuckton.”

“They’re going to need - I’m going to need people to go through these files. People who can recognise warning signs, people who can make connections.”

“Jarvis is people,” Tony said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“People made of meat, Tony. I need meat-people. A lot of them, right away. And we can’t waste time training them. They need to have the right skills already.”

Tony slouched. “Ugggh, meat-people.” He brightened. “What about the therapists?”

“The ones S.H.I.E.L.D. stole notes from?” Darcy rubbed her chin. “Jarvis, please grab that list? All counsellors, therapists, psychiatrists. Throw in social workers too.”

“Shall I limit to those currently practicing, Ms Lewis?”

“Yes, please. And US residents only, for now.”

“Couple thousand shrinks. Gonna be tough to screen them.”

Darcy grinned. “Cross-reference against the Hydra cull list. How many now?” 

“53 people meet these criteria, Ms Lewis.”

“Voila.”

Tony whistled. “Nice.”

“Not all of the people on the cull list are good guys,” Clint said. He’d been so quiet Darcy had almost forgotten he was - no, that was a lie. She knew exactly where he was, perched on a high stool by the bench, doing something with his phone. 

“I know,” Darcy said. Hydra had planned to kill a lot of horrifying assholes, presumably because they didn’t want competition in the despotic-rule-through-violence-and-fear arena. The correspondence with a couple of people she’d loudly and drunkenly declared “someone should shoot” made her stomach squirm. She didn’t want to have anything in common with Nazis. “It gives me a place to start, though. Screening 53 people is easier than-“

She jumped as both Tony and Clint both shot to their feet, fingers going to their ears.

“Iron Man here, what- _Alaska_? Rhodey, there are no nuclear facilities in- what am I saying, of course- yep. Yep. Okay, but I want Bruce in too. He’s the radiation expert and it’s not like he’d get any greener.” He jerked his chin at Clint. “Sorry, birdie, you’re out of this one.”

“I’m really sad,” Clint assured him. “I’m crying inside. Have fun with the fissionable materials.”

Tony was already walking towards the balcony. “Jarvis, suit me up.”

“Yes, sir. The Mark 61?”

“You know it. Rhodey, get Bruce a quintet? Not a helicopter. He hates helicopters.” He shot a grin over his shoulder as the armor assembled around him. A gold trefoil radiation symbol was prominently stamped on both shoulders. “See you later, new girl.” The faceplate slammed shut, and Iron Man took off.

It was louder than Darcy had expected. She found herself hunching against the noise, and had to deliberately straighten her shoulders. “He didn’t close the door,” she said, getting up to do it herself. “Rude.”

Clint grinned at her. That on-alert tension was still present in his stance, but it was fading from his face.

“Is this what it’s like? You’re just sitting around, doing whatever, and then you all have to leap up and save the day when a Rhodey call comes in?”

“Sometimes. Rhodey is-“

“ _Rhodes, J, AKA Iron Patriot: Colonel, Air Force_ ,” Darcy said, and scrubbed at her eyes. 

“You read his file?”

“Yeah. I mean, of course I knew who he was before; he’s a hero, what, a dozen times over? He stands next to President Ellis in every military-themed press conference. But now I know about the hack he and Tony pulled at MIT, and just how close he came to getting arrested for it. I know he was the first choice for Iron Man. I know about his Mama’s diabetes - hell, I know he calls her ‘Mama’.”

Clint was quiet for a moment. “I’m never going to get used to that,” he said.

“I think you’re going to have to,” Darcy told him. “We all do.” 

He made a face, but didn’t disagree. Instead, he walked over to squint at the 53 names on file. “None of these are S.H.I.E.L.D. psychs,” he said. 

“Nope.”

“They do good work, theoretically. For people who are better patients than me. The ones that weren’t Hydra, anyway. And they’re all out of a job now.”

Darcy tapped the floating screen twice. It chimed, then dissolved back into the tablet. “Clint, I’m looking for psychs who can identify people at risk and reach out to them, and they’re people who are at risk _because_ of S.H.I.E.L.D. Those people aren’t going to trust someone from S.H.I.E.L.D. Why should they? Why should anyone?”

The words hung in the air.

“I didn’t-“ Darcy said, and then stopped, because actually, she did mean it. “I trust you,” she said, realizing it was true as she said it.

Clint’s mouth twisted. “I’ve been S.H.I.E.L.D. for a long time, Darcy.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t - you read my file, you don’t know, not really. The file doesn’t cover everything. How much I owe these people. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s not a faceless ever-watching menace to me; it’s people. People who had my back in a hundred clusterfucks, people I trained, people I ate with, people I’d die for, people I-“ he hesitated, his face blanking out. Then, very carefully, as if the words might shatter: “People I killed. I betrayed S.H.I.E.L.D., Darcy. And they took me back and cleaned me out and put me back to work.”

“Loki killed those people.”

“With my hands on the bow.” He shrugged at her. “I know: I was the weapon, not the agent. I wasn’t like the Hydra agents who were just waiting for their chance; they made their own choices. But I was a really effective weapon. It matters, okay? It matters that they took me back.”

“Ms Lewis, you have a call from Miss Potts,” Jarvis said, and Darcy nearly leapt right out of her skin. “May I connect you?”

“Uh,” Darcy said. “Yes, please.”

“Hello, Darcy,” Pepper said, her voice calm and professional. “Stark Industries’ Board of Directors has officially approved the funding for the Rescue project. I thought you’d like to hear the good news right away.”

“That’s great,” Darcy said. She meant it, but her voice came out flat.

Pepper caught it too. “Is this a bad time? With Tony in Alaska, I have a brief window. We could go over some of the possibilities for your legal team.” There was a light whooshing sound - Pepper pulling up a screen on her own tablet. “If you’re available, you could interview two of the strongest candidates this afternoon.”

Darcy blew out her breath, silently. “That’s fantastic, Pepper. Should I come up to you?”

“Please. Jarvis can direct you.” Pepper clicked off.

Clint was already heading for the door. “I’ll get out of your way,” he said, and he didn’t sound upset, but Darcy still wanted to hug him until he stopped hurting. Screw Loki, anyway.

“Clint,” she said. “I’ll check out the S.H.I.E.L.D. psychs. They can’t be part of the reach out process, but they might work well as assessors.”

Clint turned around slowly. “Don’t do it for me,” he said. “It’s your project. You’re the boss.”

“I’m doing it for the project,” Darcy said tartly. “We need a lot of good people and we need them now. So get out. I have to put on some clothes that make me look vaguely competent.”

Clint gave her his slow, lazy smile. He _had_ to know how effective that was, damn it. “Yeah,” he said. “Cause that’s gonna be hard.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter delayed by trying to reconcile comics and the realities of the American legal system before I threw up my hands and said screw it.

Pepper, having promised to be in attendance for these first interviews, stayed for five minutes and then cited a forgotten meeting, graciously apologized and withdrew.

Darcy stared darkly at the door. “Right,” she muttered. “Meeting.”

“You don’t believe her?” one of the lawyers asked.

“Hell, no,” Darcy said, and then remembered she was talking to potential employees, who were definitely older and almost certainly smarter than she was. Well, if they were going to work with her - god, for her - they’d have to get used to her mouth anyway. Better that they had no illusions. “Which seems more likely to you: Pepper Potts, the world’s single most organized person, forgot a meeting? Or Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, wanted to demonstrate that Stark Industries is funding Reach Out, but not controlling it?”

His lips quirked. “Option B.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“You’re disregarding Option C,” the other lawyer put in. 

Darcy leaned back in her chair and looked at her. "Interesting. What’s Option C?”

“She wanted you to know that she has confidence in your ability to staff this project yourself.”

Darcy smiled. “So, Ms Walters. Why should I hire you, and not Mr Murdock?”

“Don’t hire me,” Jennifer Walters said. She was even shorter than Darcy, with the kind of pale skin that rarely saw sunlight, deceptively mild green eyes hidden behind thick glasses, and the shiniest shoes Darcy had ever seen. Her power suit had to have been especially fitted.

Murdock made a protest sound. “You should definitely hire Ms Walters,” he said. “You need someone with experience in-“

“Oh, I want the _job_ ,” Jennifer said. “I just don’t need to get paid for it. I was a corporate attorney before I went into civil rights; I’ve got enough money. You can use my salary to pay for Matt.” She leaned forward, intense. “He’s one of the best private attorneys in the city.”

“I’ve got your records here,” Darcy said. Both Matthew Murdock and Jennifer Walters had been on the Hydra cull list, which meant that instead of having someone perform background research and fact-checking their resumes, Pepper had simply yanked their S.H.I.E.L.D. files. Brave new world, probably. “Your numbers are outstanding, Mr Murdock. Successful defense rates well above the norm. How do you do it?”

“I’m good at reading people,” Murdock said.

Darcy wasn’t sure if that was a joke until his mouth quirked again. It had taken her about two seconds to realise that she needn’t have dressed up for Matthew Murdock, Esq, who wore red-tinted glasses inside and carried a long, thin cane.

“I listen,” he said, serious again. “It’s… people give away more than they think they do. How they say something is even more important than what they say.”

Darcy flipped another page. “You’ve turned down a number of approaches to run for district attorney.”

“Too political,” Murdock said, and shrugged. “I’d be doing a lot of supervising, not so much prosecuting. And right now… I choose my clients.”

“So why this position? You wouldn’t choose your clients. Reach Out policy is that we help anyone adversely affected by the file upload. You could be called upon to defend some total scumbags.” 

“I’ve done that before,” Murdock said.

“Yes,” Darcy said. “Those would be the cases you lost.” She laid the files out in front of him, in what would have been fantastic drama if she hadn’t realised halfway through that he wouldn’t be able to see them, which instead rendered the gesture a real dick move. “The pattern is easy enough to pick out. Not that anyone at Hydra went looking; they just saw that you’d helped a lot of people in Hell’s Kitchen, and decided you had to go. But you also had these interesting bursts of incompetence.”

“Oh, hell, Matt,” Jennifer said. “You could get disbarred. Willfully disregarding the interests of a client.”

He smiled in her direction. “Would you defend me?”

Jennifer slumped in her leather seat. “Yes. Loser.”

Darcy cleared her throat. “So could you really defend _our_ scumbags, Mr Murdock?”

“My… former clients were accused of doing things they’d actually done, Ms Lewis. Many of them proceeded to perjure themselves on the stand, or ask me to present false testimony - which I am not permitted to do.”

“How did you know it was perjury?”

His mouth tilted. “I had evidence inadmissible in court that was nevertheless conclusive. But as for the Reach Out program, as I understand it, you are proposing that I help people who, while they may be guilty of all manner of crimes, have been materially damaged by Hydra and/or S.H.I.E.L.D. My role would be to attempt to mitigate that damage.”

“Yes.”

“I can do that.”

“Good. You’re hired.” Darcy pointed at Jennifer. “You too, and please tell me where you got your shoes.”

“Paris, ’03,” Jennifer said, grinning. “You know, traditionally, we get to ask you some questions now.”

“You want to interview _me_ for the position of your boss?”

“It’s always a two-way process,” Murdock said blandly.

“Says the guy who got out of law school and set himself up in business with his best friend,” Jennifer said. “So, Ms Lewis-“

“Ask me the questions over lunch,” Darcy said on impulse. “I have to get back to interview call centre supervisors at… what time, Jarvis?”

“3.15 pm, Ms Lewis.”

“Thanks. But we can grab something in the dining hall.” She caught Jennifer’s dubious look, and smiled. “It’s the Stark dining hall, Ms Walters. Today’s special is probably lightly poached Alaskan salmon with micro greens and wild rice.”

“Good,“ Murdock said, dead-pan. “I only eat fish on Fridays.”

Jennifer laughed and got up. “So, this Jarvis - the rumors are true?”

“He’s going to make your life so much easier.”

“I live to serve,” Jarvis intoned.

 

By the time lunch was over, Jennifer and Darcy were trading shopping tips, and deciding on the first date for a girls’ night out. Matt ate his fish with neat precision, placing his water glass back in the same spot each time.

“Let’s start with a legal staff of four,” he said at one point, then, a little later. “Okay, maybe eight.”

“I’ll go over the charter tonight,” Jennifer said. “Matt, do you have any cases you need to finish?”

“Foggy can handle them.”

“I hope you’re buying that man a nice bottle of scotch and an amazing new legal secretary.”

“He’ll be fine.”

Darcy leaned back and watched them talk about case-load, potential challenges from the police unions, scope of activities and anticipated pitfalls, conscious of the easing strain in her shoulders. “So that’s done,” she muttered. Her sleek new StarkPhone vibrated.

“A reminder for your next meeting, Ms Lewis,” Jarvis said into her ear.

“Thanks, buddy.” She stood up. Matt immediately got to his feet too.

“Hey, you stay,” she said, but Jennifer was bounding to her feet. Darcy had to half-twist out of her way as the diminutive woman charged past her on those shiny patent leather heels, face like a thundercloud, and focused on-

“Oh, shit,” Darcy said under her breath, and raced behind her. Tony Stark had just entered the dining hall, and was gathering the usual collection of admirers. He looked better than the first time she’d seen him, but there was a certain greasy post-armour patina to his skin. Jennifer was ignoring him completely.

She was trained directly on the weary, rumpled man who’d come in behind Tony, dressed in sloppy track pants with a T-shirt reading “Don’t Make Me Angry”. Probably Tony’s idea of a joke. But if Jennifer had lost someone in Harlem, if she’d looked at the footage of the Hulk slamming Leviathans into office buildings-

“Tony!” Darcy shouted, and Tony twisted away from the crowd to catch the very moment Jennifer Walters drew back her fist and punched Bruce Banner very hard in the meat of his shoulder.

He rocked back, looking faintly resigned.

Tony grabbed Jennifer’s arm and yanked her into some kind of immobilization hold. Darcy was shocked at the fluid way he did it - reading that _Stark, T_ took his physical conditioning seriously wasn’t the same thing as watching him actually put it into practice. “What the-“

“Let her go,” Banner said.

“The hell is wrong with you?” Jennifer demanded, paying absolutely no attention to the angry Iron Man attempting to haul her away. “You were on the run for years in a multitude of countries, you never fucking called, you didn’t send me a single email, you-“

“Oh, one of _those_ ,” Tony said, and let go.

Jennifer turned on him, her gaze laser sharp through her glasses. “He’s my _cousin_ , you jackass. And I’m a civil rights attorney and when my family is running from illegal imprisonment and shady government harassment I expect them to call me!” She poked Banner in the chest. “Damn it, Brucie! I’ve been worried sick!”

“Brucie,” Tony said, looking fascinated.

“Where I go-“ Banner said, and shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, Jen.”

“This isn’t in your file,” Tony said. “How come this isn’t in your file?”

“Family split,” Jennifer said. “Brian Banner was…”

Banner closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“…difficult,” Jennifer concluded. “Mom didn’t see her foster sister after the wedding. Bruce and I only met by chance at college.”

“Before I had a file,” Banner said. “Before anyone was paying me any attention at all. Jen, I’m- this isn’t the best place to talk, maybe. Can we go somewhere quieter? My lab?”

“Your office is ready, Jennifer,” Darcy put in. “Floor 68, Jarvis can guide you.”

Banner blinked at her, but Jennifer took charge and linked her arm with his. “Let’s go,” she said. “You tell me what you’ve been doing for the past ten years, and I’ll tell you all about my new job.”

Tony watched them leave. “Holy shit, Lewis. Did I just hire an unstable pixie lawyer?”

“ _I_ hired her,” Darcy said. “What I do with the Reach Out budget is my business, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah. My advice? Buy a ping-pong table for the break room. Everyone loves ping-pong.” He looked vaguely around and waved his hands. “Party’s over, folks. What am I saying, there’s always a party, I am a party, the eternal party, but move along, seriously, nothing to see. Oops, was that insensitive?”

“Probably,” Matt said. He was at Darcy’s shoulder, and she had the feeling he’d been right behind her the second Jennifer began to move. How the hell had he navigated that busy dining hall at speed? Her respect for him increased a couple of notches.

Tony chuckled. “Murdock, right? I think my legal team’s been trying to get you for months.”

“They didn’t get me,” Matt said, and gestured in Darcy’s direction. “She did.”

Tony grinned again. “Good for her. Now, I just saved a vast chunk of tundra from becoming a smoking slag pile, so I’m going to eat three steaks and keel over. Catch you later, Lewis.”

Darcy’s phone vibrated again. “Oh hell,” she said. “I’m late. Matt, do you mind-“

“I’ll find my way out.” He held out his hand, and Darcy grasped it and shook. “Glad to be working with you, Darcy,” he said, sounding entirely sincere. “This is going to be… very interesting.”

“And how,” Darcy muttered, and raced for the door. She needed shoes like Jennifer's. She had the feeling she was going to be doing a lot of running in heels.


	12. Chapter 12

Over the next week and a half, Darcy hired a 911 call-centre supervisor from Chicago to run her first call centre, a security team staffed by highly recommended ex-military guys who had never been on S.H.I.E.L.D’s payroll and, after a long discussion with Pepper, four psychiatrists from the former S.H.I.E.L.D. health centre to round out the roster of therapists going through the files. She had HR experts and office managers, administrative assistants and accountants, and the legal team, who all respected Matt and regarded Jennifer with an adoration that verged on worship. Darcy had never worked so hard or thought so much. 

She was so busy that she’d squeezed in only two personal phone calls - one to Jane, and another (much shorter) one to her mom.

She was so busy her new assistant had to remind her to down an energy bar for lunch.

She was so busy that she should have slept soundly every night.

She woke every morning sometime between three and four, and screamed into her pillow.

 

No matter how late she had to stay in her office, Darcy did carve out time to eat with the twins every evening, in their increasingly idiosyncratically decorated apartment. Wanda was teaching herself to cook, staring unnervingly hard into the oven as if she was daring the food to burn. The fridge was piling up with leftovers; the bookshelf was stuffed with cookbooks. Pietro mostly chopped things and stole tastes when he thought his sister wasn’t looking. He never ran when anyone who didn’t know about him was around, and the nervous energy was almost visible, crackling off him as he read or played video games or stalked the narrow borders of his new world, so carefully contained that it hurt Darcy to watch him. She thought about offering him something in the Reach Out program, but he wouldn’t have been any happier with gofer work, and he wasn’t qualified for almost anything else.

There was the security team, but… no. Pietro had been through enough violence.

They’d work something out, once the program was launched. Once she got a chance to breathe.

 

Clint wasn’t officially involved in Reach Out, but she caught him putting the security squad through their paces on Monday afternoon.

“I’m not sure about Darrens,” he said afterwards.

“Really? His recommendation was solid.”

“He’s capable. But he said some stuff.”

Darcy raised an eyebrow.

Clint folded his arms. “I wouldn’t put him on a detail protecting women.”

Darcy nodded. “Jarvis, could you please ask Samir to get Darrens up here?” Jarvis could just as easily have called Darrens directly, but Darcy had by now learned that such requests were less unsettling when they were relayed by her PA. 

“See you later,” Clint said, and she had to fight down a momentary impulse to ask him to stay. It was the first time she’d ever fired anyone. Before, she’d always been the one on the other side of the desk.

But it went about as well as could be expected.

“Can I ask why you’re doing this?” Darrens asked when she gave him the news, his close-set eyes just a little too intent on her face.

“We feel that you’re not the best match for the project,” Darcy said. “Your final pay cheque will cover the entirety of the two-month trial period.”

“Huh.” He sucked at his teeth. “I guess you’re the boss.” His tone left no doubt that in his mind, she should not be.

“I guess I am,” Darcy said. “Thank you for your service, Mr Darrens.”

When she saw him out, Clint was perched on the edge of Samir’s desk, telling a disturbing story about something he’d done in Bulgaria. Samir, who had a thing for biceps, was eating it up. Clint looked at Darrens and went expressionless. Darrens looked at him, and at Darcy, and went pale.

Darcy went back into her office. Pneumatic, perfectly balanced Stark doors didn’t slam, but she gave it the old college try.

 

On Wednesday, just before the end of official office hours, Tony came down from the penthouse and shepherded everyone into the break room. The bright red and gold wrapping paper did nothing to disguise the ping pong table.

The chocolate fountain, slushie machine, and fully stocked bar turned out to be way more popular.

 

On Friday at 10.24 am, a Hydra cell targeted the White House in a suicidal frontal assault. The Secret Service - who had been less fully infiltrated than most branches - repelled the attack with ease, with some assistance from Iron Patriot, Iron Man and Hawkeye, but President Ellis went into the secret location again. His face, when he spoke to the nation, was noticeably older than it had ever been. The people on Floor 68 gathered around TV screens and watched in murmuring groups. 

“He won’t stand for re-election.”

Darcy wasn’t sure she’d said it out loud until Jennifer nodded. “That’s a tired, tired man,” she said. “How many times do people have to shoot at you before you call it a day?”

“Who are the frontrunners?” someone else asked.

“Which party?”

“Either. I mean, can you think of anyone?”

“Rumour said Stern was going to run against.”

“Hah, well, unless you can run from a federal pen, he’s out.”

“Delmato, Kelly…”

“Ugh, I can’t stand Kelly.”

“Holzmann.”

“Whatshername. Taylor.”

“I’ve heard good things about Kamal Rakim.”

“He’s too young. People won’t vote for him.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s why you think people won’t vote for him, because he’s too _young_.”

The anchors showed the footage again, and the talking stilled. Darcy caught, because she was straining for it, the flash of purple-and-black and whoops-there’s-an-arrow as a group of four men in masks charged over lush lawn. Iron Patriot did something complicated with his shoulder missiles and a chunk of the Rose Garden blew up. The camera jerked, and lifted into an aerial shot, the White House grounds diminishing below, then swiveled to point directly at Iron Man, who was holding the camera operator securely against his armor.

“Any comment on this situation as it unfolds, Mr Stark?” the reporter asked, her voice unruffled.

“This is why you frustrate people, Christine,” Iron Man said. He dropped her - carefully - outside the police perimeter, and zoomed off again.

It was old footage. The assault was over.

They still hadn’t come home.

“Where the hell is Captain America?” Darcy muttered.

It was so far under her breath to be, she thought, inaudible, but Matt looked her way. “No one knows, do they?” he asked.

“Has anyone heard anything about Captain America since the carriers fell?” Darcy asked.

No one had. Someone thought he was dead. Someone thought he might have been spotted in Poughkeepsie.

“Isn’t this sort of his thing?” asked Samir. “Defending the President and the American Way?” His tone was dry.

“Yeah,” Darcy sighed. She should probably tell everybody to get back to work; they had a soft opening planned for Tuesday. But Megumi had a cousin in the Service and Sarah’s ex-wife worked in the White House press office and everyone was traumatized and freaking out and wondering what the hell Hydra would do next.

Darcy went back to her office and called the twins.

“We’re okay,” Wanda’s soft voice said. “There’s a very strong probability Clint won’t be back until late tonight, though.”

“But he’s coming back,” Darcy said, not even caring that she sounded in desperate need of reassurance.

Wanda giggled. “Yes. That’s… so probable it’s nearly certain.”

“And that’s funny because?”

Wanda giggled again, and hung up.

Darcy stared at her phone. “American life is a terrible influence on you,” she told it severely. Then she sighed, and pulled the soft opening plans again. If nobody else could concentrate, she could at least go over the details.

Twenty minutes later, Samir brought her coffee.

Twenty minutes after that, she went to the bathroom, and everyone was behind their desks. Darcy had to spend a few extra minutes in the stall, and then some time in front of the mirror, redoing her smeared mascara.

 

 

Darcy ate dinner with the twins, and went back to the office to finish some hiring phone calls, and at 10 pm she went down to her apartment and stared at the TV, totally oblivious to what was on the screen. Jarvis informed her the moment Clint got home, just after midnight. 

Darcy waited for as long as she could stand it - which was about seventeen minutes - before she took the lift to his apartment and knocked on the door.

Her heart was thumping against her ribs so hard it was almost painful.

Clint was smiling as he opened the door. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Darcy said.

His left cheek was one huge bruise. His hair was caked in dust. He stank of smoke. 

She wanted to wrap herself around him and hold on until the world made sense.

“Please woo me,” said Darcy. “I would really, really like that. I would like you to woo me.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's shorter - might be a couple of weeks before there's more, and I didn't want to dangle you off that cliff that long.

Clint’s expression was puzzled, slightly annoyed. Maybe he’d changed his mind; maybe it had been a joke she’d gotten really, really wrong. 

“Sorry,” he said, loudly, “could you repeat that?”

Darcy’s stomach turned itself inside out. “Don’t- It’s fine, I don’t-“

“Blew up my ears today,” Clint said, still too loud. “Aggravated an old injury. I can’t hear you. I’m trying to lip-read, but it’s been a while. You something really like me do you you?”

Darcy stepped forward and he fell back, steadying himself against the doorframe. His apartment was built on the same plan as hers, but reversed - his kitchen on the right, his bedroom on the left. There was a half-finished bowl of cereal on the counter, the spoon sticking out of it. His bow was lying on the kitchen table, arrows neatly spaced out beside it.

Darcy picked up the arrow with the shiny adamantium head and carefully scratched W-O-O M-E into the hardwood table.

Clint stared at her. “Oh,” he said. “Really?”

Darcy nodded.

He reached for her, and she pushed against him, pulling his mouth down on to hers, threading her fingers through his dusty hair. Clint lifted her up onto the table and staggered.

“Shit,” he said, and she wrapped her legs around him, yanking him close before he could get away. “Christ,” he gasped. “You feel so good, Darcy. I want… Jesus.” He dropped his head, sucked in a breath, and kissed her again, driving all the thoughts out of her brain. 

She arched her back, her hips grinding against his, her fingers dragging down the strong planes of his back. He shuddered again, fingers digging into her arms, just on the pleasant edge of pain.

Then he pulled back and stared at her. His pupils were blown out with desire. They were also sort of unsteady, darting around from place to place, and his knuckles were tight where he braced against the table.

Darcy tilted her head at him. Her whole body felt warm and loose. God, how were they still both wearing all their clothes? Why hadn’t they just melted off?

“I can’t even see straight,” Clint said, watching her mouth. “My inner ear is fucked right now. Not to be gross, but if I try to do anything too strenuous there’s a not insignificant chance that I’ll puke.” 

Darcy sighed, exaggerating the motion so that her boobs rose and fell on the gusty breath. 

“I hear you,” Clint said, and then cackled obnoxiously until Darcy whacked his shoulder. “So. Um. What do you want to do?”

“Bed?” Darcy said, pointing in the right direction. She thought, too late, about fingerspelling, but her rusty sixth-grade memory of the alphabet might not be good enough, and besides, she didn’t even know if Clint could sign.

The B-D combination was apparently clear enough, though.

“Just bed?” Clint said. “To sleep?”

She nodded.

“I can do that,” he said, and groaned. “That might be all I can do for a while, Darcy. Shit. You deserve better. I’m-”

Darcy held up a finger, then tapped the note she’d carved into the table. Clint might not be able to hear the rapping ring out in the apartment, but the emphatic violence of the gesture was something he could read.

“Woo you,” he said. His smile was gentle, this time, not that devastating grin, just purely happy, and Darcy felt her heart twist. “All right, then. Let’s go to bed.”

 

Clint’s bed, to Darcy’s considerable surprise, was not only made, it was made neatly, with the turned down sheet perfectly parallel to the foot of the bed. She kicked off her heels and sat on the edge, suddenly breathless again. Clint watched her with hooded eyes, as if he wasn’t quite sure she was real. 

“I’m going to shower,” he said. “Because I really- I have to shower. You just, um, get comfortable, okay? I’ll be back when I’m clean.” He started for the door, then turned back. “Also, if you hear some bangs, it means I fell over so uh, come get me?”

Darcy nodded.

“Okay. Pick any side. Any side is fine.” He fidgeted with the hem of his jacket, ran his other hand through his hair, and then consciously stilled. “I’m really glad you’re here. I’m glad we’re doing this.”

“Me too,” Darcy said. Slowly, for him. Loudly, for her.

As soon as he left the room, Darcy stuffed her fists into her mouth and made tiny screaming noises. She was on his bed. Clint’s bed. She kicked her shoes off, taking pleasure from the unnecessarily loud thumps. “Stupid. Fucking. Hydra,” she muttered, and considered the whole bed situation.

Going back to her apartment to get pajamas wasn’t happening, because Clint might interpret her leaving in the entirely wrong way. Sleeping naked was also out, for completely unfair and stupid reasons. But she wasn’t going to bed in a silk blouse and wool pants, either.

In the end, she took off everything but her panties and a camisole, and slid under the sheets. She meant to stay awake for him, maybe discuss exactly how much strenuous activity was allowed before they entered vomit territory. Like, for instance, what if she was the one doing all the work? She thought about that, while the edges of her brain pleasantly fuzzed out, and drifted.

Someone warm and damp and smelling of clean skin and fresh cotton slid in behind her. Darcy sighed and snuggled back.

A strong arm wrapped around her stomach. “Go back to sleep,” someone murmured, amused.

“Mmplh,” Darcy retorted, and slept through the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friend: Are you going to write the sex scene now?  
> Me: No! I'm going to write the no-sex scene!


	14. Chapter 14

Darcy woke to the smell of bacon, the nagging feeling that she should have been awake several hours ago, the tuneless cacophony of Clint singing Bon Jovi in the kitchen, and the sound of someone else banging on the door.

She rolled out of bed and into her pants, and did her bra up under the camisole, swearing at the last hook when it refused to do up. “Jarvis, who’s outside?” she asked, but she was pretty sure she knew. No one else Clint knew would be banging out the riff from “Back In Black”.

Jarvis probably couldn’t sound embarrassed, but he had a great line in dry. “Mr Stark, Ms Lewis.”

“Awesome,” Darcy grunted, and threw the blouse on as well.

The knocking stopped. “Mr Stark has instructed me to rapidly oscillate the artificial light settings,” Jarvis said.

“Don’t do that,” Darcy said instantly, and only later wondered what it meant that Jarvis not only obeyed her instruction over Tony’s, but had mentioned his in the first place. At the time, her concern was what Clint might do with a bad case of vertigo and a pan full of hot bacon fat if he was startled by flickering lights. She stalked to the door and yanked it open.

“…” Tony Stark said.

Darcy grabbed him by the collar and hauled him in before his mouth could work again. “He could have been _sleeping_ , you dick,” she snarled.

“Hearing aids,” Tony said quickly, holding them up before her eyes. “I adapted these. I need to do some testing, but-” His eyes tracked over her shoulder. “Clint!” he said, far too loudly, his mouth moving in exaggerated motion. “I got a thing you have to-“

“Just talk normally,” Darcy said, and turned around.

Clint was standing there, arms crossed, eyebrow slightly raised. Shirtless.

Darcy’s knees went a little weak.

From the pleased crease of Clint’s mouth, she thought he’d figured that out. “I can’t test those until I heal up some,” he told Tony. “Might do more damage.”

“Oh,” Tony said, and actually staggered a little. Darcy surveyed him and dropped him into a chair.

He was wearing a black singlet and worn jeans that had probably once been blue. There were scorch marks on two of his fingers, and mottled bruising all over his left arm and the side of his neck, until it vanished under the shirt.

“Jarvis, when did Tony last sleep?”

“Some 42 hours ago, Ms Lewis.”

“That’s nothing,” Tony scoffed. “I’ve done a five day bender with only-“

“You fought a pitched battle yesterday when you’d already been up for more than a day,” Darcy said, through clenched teeth. “Then you debriefed, and you came home, and you went to your workshop?”

Tony evaded eye contact. “Wanted to test some ideas,” he muttered. 

“Oh my god. This is why I no longer babysit scientists.”

“I’m an engineer,” Tony said, sounding slightly insulted. “Also, if we’re talking about things we did last night-“

“No,” Darcy said, and stood up. Clint had reappeared to hand her a laden plate, which she slid under Tony’s nose. “Eat this. You don’t get to say anything about things I did last night.“ Or didn’t, but she wasn’t telling him that.

“Excuse you, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I happen to be Tony Stark, and-“

Darcy poked him in the arm-bruise. 

“Ow,” Tony said, and picked up his fork. “Abuse. Violence in the workplace. Bacon.” 

“One out of three aint bad,” Clint told him, and then kissed Darcy while Tony’s mouth was full.

Darcy closed her eyes and kissed back, enjoying the choking noises in the background almost as much as the dirty drag of Clint’s tongue against her own.

Almost.

“Holy shit,” Tony said, after he'd cleared all the bacon form his windpipe. “Which one of you wrote this on the table?”

 

Tony’s 19-year-old assistant, who Pepper Potts had selected personally, turned up a little later, just at the point when Darcy was concerned that Tony might actually pass out in Clint’s kitchen, insisting he didn’t need to sleep the whole time.

“Thank you god,” Darcy said, when Clint let her in.

“I like that job title,” Sue said. “I think I’ll get it added in my next performance review.” She eyed Tony. “Which I’m scheduling for next week.”

“I saved the world,” Tony mumbled. “You should all be very nice to me.”

“If you don’t get upstairs and into your own bed within ten minutes, I’ll make you complete an evaluation form with forty performance categories and an extended efficiency rubric,” Sue told him.

Tony lifted his head and stared at her. “And if I do go to bed?”

“You can scrawl ‘Susan Storm rocks’ on a napkin.”

“Sold,” Tony said, and staggered to his feet. Sue steadied him with an arm under the shoulder. She was a lot stronger than her blonde slimness might indicate; swim training, she’d told Darcy. She hadn’t explained how she’d gotten so good at handling spoilt, difficult, borderline alcoholic geniuses, and Darcy hadn’t asked. Sue didn’t turn up on any SHIELD or HYDRA files, although she probably had a Stark Industries one now. It was nice to know someone who still had secrets.

“I got you a present,” Tony said in his way out, waving in Darcy’s general direction. “It’s in your office. Enjoy.”

Clint closed the door behind them with a definite click and looked expectantly at Darcy.

“Work,” she said.

“I figured,” he said. “Soft opening Tuesday, right?”

She nodded. “Gala opening on Saturday.”

Clint’s mouth twisted. “Need a plus one?” he offered, with wholly endearing diffidence.

She grinned. “You bet. Clint Barton: designated arm candy.”

“I’ll probably be better some,” he said, watching her mouth carefully. “If you want-“

“I want,” Darcy said. “I definitely want.”

Clint swallowed hard. “It’s a date,” he said, and yanked her in for another kiss before, breathless and somewhat mussed, she stepped out into the hallway and walked into Wanda.

“Uh,” Darcy said. “Honey, I know you know things but waiting right outside isn’t-“

Wanda wasn’t listening. “22nd and 4th,” she said. “Don’t go there.”

“Okay,” Darcy said on reflex, and then looked closer. Wanda’s pupils were very black and very big. “What happens if I do, Wanda?”

“It’s not good,” Wanda said. “I tried to look closer, but it wouldn’t open up. The probabilities won’t align.” She squeezed her eyes shut, brow furrowed so deeply Darcy could see what she would like when she was older. “I’m pushing.” Her voice cracked a little, and Darcy grabbed her hand.

“Stop pushing,” she said firmly.

“If I can just-“

“No,” Darcy said, putting real command into her voice. Wanda blinked up at her, her features relaxing from that pained mask. Darcy squeezed her hand a little tighter. “Don’t hurt yourself. I just won’t go, okay? And you’ll let me know if anything changes.”

Wanda nodded, and Darcy thought the tremulous smile made any future uncertainty more than worthwhile.

“I’m running late,” she added.

“It’s Saturday,” Wanda said, looking stern. “You shouldn’t work so much.”

“Just until the opening,” Darcy promised. “And uh, about…” She waved at Clint’s door.

“You can tell whoever you want,” Wanda said. “I won’t tell anyone.” 

Darcy wasn’t sure if that included Pietro. On the one hand, it wasn’t really anyone’s obligation to tell a nineteen year old with a crush on an older woman that she was sleeping with someone else. On the other hand, they were all living in Stark Tower and if Wanda could just-

“Anyone,” Wanda said.

“Oh,” Darcy said. “Great.”

 

Darcy was really late by that point, and most of the staff wouldn’t be there, so she just went straight up to her office. If anyone wanted to give her crap about wearing yesterday’s clothes, she could always threaten to fire them.

She’d totally blanked on Tony’s mention of a present waiting in her office, so when she walked in and the most stylish woman in the world turned away from the window and smiled brightly, Darcy actually screamed a little bit.

“That’s not usually how people greet me,” said Janet van Dyne, crooking one perfect eyebrow. 

Darcy placed one hand on her hammering heart. “I didn’t expect you,” she managed. Her hair was unbrushed, her blouse was wrinkled, her- oh god, her armpits were slightly sweaty. “I am going to kill Tony Stark,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, honey,” Janet said, her tilted eyes wrinkling in sympathy. “I’ve been trying to do that since kindergarten. When I was four I pushed him in a moat. Little shit learned how to swim.”

“A moat?”

“We were in England.” She waved a manicured hand. “One of their castles. No, no, don’t back away.” She walked a slow circle around Darcy, who forced her shoulders down and her back straight. “Good hair, great eyes, love the curves, and we can do a lot with those collarbones.”

“Um?”

“I’m making you a dress,” Janet said. “For the gala opening.”

“Van Dyne Inc is making me-?”

“No. I am. Personally. And I’m telling everyone with a working recorder that I’m doing it.” She flipped open a gold notebook and began scribbling.

Jarvis made what, in a human, would be a throat-clearing sound. “Ms van Dyne, I would be happy to give you Ms Lewis’s measurements.“

“No, thanks, Jarvis,” Janet said, without looking up. “I prefer to trust my eyes. Dark blue, I think. We can’t make the most of your cleavage for an event like this, but how about something with a low back? The chain effect is still on trend.”

“I have back lumps,” Darcy said. “And can you wear a bra with one of those?”

“The bra will be built in. Trust me, you’ll stay up all night.”

“Lumps, though.” Darcy shook her head. “My mom will freak. She’ll take one look at the photos and call to remind me I need _structured fabrics_.”

Janet closed the notebook. “Do you care?”

Darcy thought about it. “Yes,” she said.

“No chain back,” Janet said, and opened the notebook again. “How about a square back to just below the shoulder blades? Fitted and floor length, of course, with gathering here and here to emphasize your waist, and… there.” She flipped the notebook around.

Darcy stared at the elegant, architectural lines. “You’re a genius,” she said.

“Heh,” Janet said. “You know what’s funny? Tony and I both got started on our respective career paths, oh, nearly thirty years ago now. And when we started, he drank too much and fucked a lot of people and followed in his father’s footsteps to uphold a billion-dollar arms manufacturing dynasty and they called him a playboy genius. I drank too much and fucked a lot of people and followed in my mother’s footsteps to uphold a billion-dollar fashion dynasty, and they called _me_ ‘notorious socialite Janet Van Dyne'.”

“They don’t call you that now.”

“Not so often. But I remembered.” She reached out, and took Darcy’s wrist in her delicate fingers. “There are a lot of bastards out there, and they're going to be after you. They’ll say anything they can to bring you down. They’ll talk about your youth, your inexperience, your looks, long before they pay attention to what you have to say.” She laughed, but there was no amusement in the sound. “They’ll talk about your looks until you want to kill them all. But I am Janet van Dyne, and I am better at this than almost anyone alive. You listen to me, and I’ll ready you for that battle. I can’t promise you won’t get scarred; bad things happen in war. But there won’t be a chink in your armor.”

Up close, those brown eyes gleamed with so much ferocity that it took Darcy a moment to realise that Janet van Dyne was actually looking up at her. She knew the woman was short; the media had liked to make a big deal out of it - the daughter of a huge WASPy senator and his tall Indonesian wife turning out so dainty. 

_Dainty_ wasn’t the same thing as _weak_.

“You really want Reach Out to succeed,” Darcy said.

“I do,” Janet said. “Hydra killed my former best friend’s mom and dad and turned him into a raging sociopath I didn’t speak to for decades. I want you to strip them of any triumph they might take in this chaos. I want them devastated.” 

Darcy squared her shoulders and felt the wrinkled silk fall into place. “Come to the soft opening on Tuesday. I don’t think there'll be any devastation, but I’m hoping to see my team help some people.”

Janet's grin was a wild flash of joy. "Oh, girl. That's victory enough for me."


	15. Chapter 15

At 3am on Tuesday morning, Darcy tried to sneak out from under Clint’s arm without waking him.

She failed, of course. The slow rhythm of his breathing didn’t alter at all, but he tapped her shoulder to let her know he’d woken. Darcy sighed, sat up, and switched on the light. “I can’t sleep,” she said, looking into his face. “I’m going to get up.”

“Want company?”

Darcy thought about it. “No,” she decided.

“Okay,” he said, and to all outward indications, was instantly asleep again. Easy waking, easy sleeping: that was Clint. There were a lot of possible explanations for how he could have developed that skill, but Darcy had read his file. She knew the places he’d been, the things he’d done.

Sometimes she thought about the blood on his hands, and wondered what it said about her, that, knowing, she so badly craved his touch.

Darcy got dressed and stood in the living room, thinking. There was her own apartment, or the workshop where Tony was probably still awake and working, or the streets below, which would still be alive in the early morning of a cold weekday. She was living in a New York skyscraper, about to launch a major NGO funded by one of the world’s biggest businesses, and she couldn’t make her own brain slow down. Her thumbs rubbed against the pads of her fingers, counting them off, backwards and forwards.

In the end, she went up.

On the way up, she wondered if she was actually allowed to be there, but the door slid open without any fuss, and if Jarvis had any thoughts on the matter he kept them locked in his electronic brain. Darcy stepped out onto the roof, where Erik had opened the portal to the invaders. Just below was the balcony where Loki and Thor had fought with the crushing rage of gods.

This was where Natalia Alianovna Romanova had saved the world.

All of the equipment had been removed, but, just like the tiny dip in the floor of Tony’s kitchen, there were signs of the battle remaining - scars in the concrete, a dropped bolt in a corner. Darcy had no doubt that these were deliberate. Neither Tony nor Pepper forgot their grudges. 

She walked a circuit of the roof, looking for all the little reminders of what Loki had done to them, and then peered over the railing, at the city gleaming below. 

It was all so fucking fragile. 

The terror washed over her from the feet up like she’d been dropped in ice-cold water. She gasped, crouched, and waited, shaking, both hands pressed to her frantic heart.

When she could open her eyes, Pietro was stooped over her, frowning. His hand was half-extended. He pulled it back, tucked it into his pocket to match the other.

“It’s late,” he said.

“Yeah.” Darcy made herself stand up. Her hands were still trembling. She balled them into fists and tucked them into her armpits.

“I thought you were all right,” he said. “You seemed-“ He hesitated. What had he been going to put there? Normal? Sane? 

The twins needed her to be all right.

“I’m fine,” Darcy said. “Mostly. Just… not always good with heights.” She concentrated on her breathing, forced her shoulders down from her ears. 

Pietro looked unconvinced.

“Are you looking forward to the opening?” she asked, in an obvious bid at redirection, and was surprised when he scowled.

“I’m not invited.”

Darcy blinked at him. “Uh, sure you are.”

His eyes went incredulous.

“Were you waiting for a formal invitation?” Darcy heard her voice go high and surprised, and wanted to bite her tongue off. Of course he had been. He’d probably been stewing over this rejection for days.

“You’re definitely invited,” she said. “You and Wanda. I didn’t think for a second that you wouldn’t be there.”

“Oh,” Pietro said. “Well…”

“Please come,” she said, and for some reason dropped a little curtsey. “Sir Pietro Maximoff, I would be _devastated_ if you declined to attend to my little soiree.”

Pietro’s whole face lightened with laughter. “My lady Lewis, I would be delighted to comply.” He clicked his heels and bowed, a much smoother affair than her wobbly curtsey, and took her hand in his. His fingers were long and cool.

“Uh,” Darcy said, and he touched his lips to the back of her knuckles with dry precision before he straightened up and let go. “Wait. Pietro, I need to tell you something.”

Pietro was looking straight at her. “You’re with _him_ now.”

“Yes,” Darcy said, and had to fight the absurd urge to add an apology.

Pietro’s jaw worked. “Will you be angry if I say that if he hurts you, I’ll hurt him?”

“A little bit,” Darcy said, before honesty prompted, “though I appreciate the sentiment.”

Pietro nodded. “I will, though,” he said, and vanished.

“No one is ever going to be able to beat that boy at a dramatic exit,” Darcy muttered. “Jarvis?”

“Yes, Ms Lewis?”

“I’d prefer it if Tony didn’t get to hear anything about that last conversation.”

“You can rely on my discretion, Ms Lewis.”

“Thanks, buddy.” She tilted her head. “So… that could have gone much worse.”

“Ms Lewis, if I may…”

Darcy sighed. “Shoot.”

“My observation of your demeanor and vital statistics indicates that your recent experience could be classified as an anxiety attack. You have experienced similar, less severe, incidents in your sleeping quarters and in your office, and I have noted elevated blood pressure-“

“You going Baymax on me, Jarvis?”

“The Baymax protocols are proprietary software belonging to Hamada Industries,” Jarvis said, with a distinct note of injured pride. “Any similarities between my own scanning capabilities can be attributed to the complementary goals shared by-“

“I get it, Jarvis. I’ll do something about it when I can. I just don’t have time to find a shrink right now.”

“I can recommend-“

“Not right now,” Darcy said, with more bite.

“Certainly, Ms Lewis,” Jarvis said. Darcy was about ninety percent certain he wasn’t programmed to sound offended, but he managed anyway. “May I suggest an indoor relocation? Your skin surface temperature has noticeably chilled.”

“So has your attitude,” Darcy said, under her breath, so Jarvis could pretend he hadn’t heard if he wanted.

It seemed he did. The ride back down to Clint’s apartment was full of a thrumming silence. She crawled back into bed, her body still zinging from the attack’s adrenaline surge, and pulled Clint’s arm around her waist. He nuzzled at the back of her neck.

“I think I might need some help,” she said, into the dark, where no one could hear her.

It was something, just to say the words. She closed her eyes and drifted on the fuzzy border between dream and waking, until the alarm pulled her up and into the day.

 

At 7:45am on Tuesday morning, Darcy Lewis looked around the tightly packed call centre and sighed. “You know,” she said, into the expectant silence, “half of you aren’t even supposed to be here. I should send you back upstairs.”

“Like we’re gonna miss this,” Jennifer said, flicking a grin at her cousin. Tony opened his mouth, and Janet van Dyne poked him in the ribs before he could say anything terrible.

“Speech!” someone called.

“Uh,” Darcy said. “I don’t have anything prepared.” But the twins were watching, and Clint was leaning on the door, arms crossed, that lazy smile teasing at his mouth. She was pretty sure she couldn’t make a run for it now. She tugged at the hem of the jacket Janet had put her in half an hour ago and pitched her voice to the back of the room.

“I just want to say thank you,” she said. “Because I don’t know about you, but three weeks ago I woke up and felt completely exposed. Anyone in the world could find out information about me that I’d never said they could have. The reason it was shared had absolutely nothing to do with me. But the fact that it’s all out there now - that is about me, and the millions of people like me, and the massive problems that’s caused for them. Some of you know what that feels like, and some of you don’t - and I’m glad for you guys, I am. And I’m so grateful you’re here, that you care, with us, about everyone who’s hurting right now.”

Pepper Potts lifted her chin. Her eyes were suspiciously bright.

“We are reaching out to help where we can, because we can,” Darcy said. “Because we can’t change the past, but we can make a better future.”

The applause, in that crowded room, was almost unbearably loud. Darcy rocked back on her heels and let it crash over her for a slow five count, and then lifted her voice over the diminishing tumult to shout: “Jarvis! Have we got any calls?” 

It was probably undignified for the leader of a major NGO to cross her fingers behind her back.

She did it anyway.

Jarvis waited until the room was completely silent. No one could ever accuse Tony Stark’s AI of lacking a sense of drama. “Ms Lewis,” he said, his voice somehow more resonant and authoritative than usual, “all lines are occupied.”

“Well, it’s 7:53,” Darcy told her people. “But what say we start early?”

And as the cheers died down and the operators flicked on their headsets and turned to their screens, as the law team retreated to their offices and the psychologists went to their booths, as the security team followed Clint’s head-jerk, and Pepper and Jan exchanged nods behind Tony’s back, Darcy picked up the headset she’d insisted on reserving for this moment and slipped it on.

“Hello, you’re talking to Reach Out,” she said. “This is Darcy. How can I help?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI THERE. Thanks for reading! Your comments mean a great deal to me.
> 
> Nope, it's not abandoned. Yep, it's still in progress.


	16. Chapter 16

By Friday 3pm, when they allowed the first reporters inside, it was clear that Reach Out was working. People were cautious, but they were also desperate enough to ask for help, and Reach Out was getting it to them. Some stories had already got out - the security team that had escorted an armed and enraged man out of his ex-boyfriend’s apartment, the therapists working across the country to provide help for people whose hard-won equilibrium had been threatened by disclosure, the lawyers coming down like the wrath of all the gods on anyone who had fired or harassed an employee for the information revealed so precipitously without their consent.

The lawyers, in particular. Matt Murdock might have been the only person at Reach Out sleeping less than Darcy was, and Darcy felt every minute of missed shuteye when she got to the last interview of the day. Christine Everhart was as polished and sharp as a scalpel.

“Any truth to the rumors that this project, like the Maria Stark Foundation and the Avengers, is just another front for Tony Stark’s increasing privatization of American government authority?” she asked.

“Stark Industries provided the initial funding boost,” Darcy said, and held up her hand as Ms Everhart opened her mouth, “but Reach Out is now receiving funding offers from several interested parties, including Van Dyne Fashions, Rand Incorporated, and Hamada Industries.”

“Just those three?”

“I’ll put the list in the full press release, Ms Everhart,” Darcy said, and in the corner of her eye, Samir nodded and tapped something into his tablet.

Everhart flipped a page in her notebook. “How about the rumor that you’ve already had to… terminate a Hydra operative who snuck in? Doesn’t say much for your security measures.”

“Completely false,” Darcy said, hoping like hell she was telling the truth. 

“But you have fired people? I’ve spoken to a former member of your security team.”

 _Darrens_ , Darcy thought. _I bet that conversation was fun._ “Unfortunately, every new organisation has a settling-in phase,” she said blandly.

“This particular organization didn’t even exist a month ago. That’s a speedy settling-in phase for a nation-wide NGO planning to go international in…” Everhart flipped the notebook again. Darcy was beginning to conceive a terrible hatred of the thing. “Three months?”

“That’s right,” Darcy said. Samir pointed at his watch and raised his eyebrow. She shook her head slightly.

Everhart caught the gesture. Her eyes narrowed. “And this very fast moving organization is headed by a very recent Political Science graduate who has no business management experience whatsoever.”

Darcy had been prepped on this point with some statements that stressed the teamwork involved in running Reach out with the assistance of notable human rights lawyer Jennifer Walters, and how glad she was to have Pepper Potts as a personal mentor. They’d worked on the other reporters, as far as she could tell. She laced her fingers behind her neck and stretched. “Yep. No business management experience.”

Samir looked horrified. Everhart blinked.

“You could make a strong story out of that,” Darcy said. “My file has my complete psych eval anyway, but you’re Christine Everhart - I’m sure you’ve already talked to some of my old boyfriends and a couple of my former professors and put together a much more convincingly damning picture. To be fair, you’d probably want to mention that I wrangled two world-saving scientists and assisted in on-the-ground rescue efforts in Puente Antiguo and London, but then you’d condescendingly point out that these might not actually qualify me to lead my team or oversee our finances. Although you might not say the last part if you’d ever had to work through Erik’s box of expense receipts, or rewrite one of Jane’s grant applications. She’s hopeless; she thinks the science should speak for itself.”

“Not quite the same order of magnitude,” Everhart said, but it lacked bite. “Are _you_ sure you’re the right person for this job, Ms Lewis?”

“I’m the person who was there at the right time. I had the right idea - that I’m sure about. The rest of it… I guess we’ll see.” She waited a bit. “I did get a nation-wide NGO up and running in less than a month.”

“But you think you can do this long-term?” Everhart pressed. She was tapping her pen on her notebook.

“I don’t know. I know that if you write that story, you’ll make my job harder.”

“I’m not here to make your job easy, Ms Lewis.”

“But you don’t want to make it impossible, Ms Everhart.” It wasn’t a question. Darcy locked eyes with the woman. “That’s not why you chose your job, is it?”

Christine Everhart’s eyes didn’t falter. “No,” she said. “I chose my job because when I was a little girl, I wanted to save the world.” She flipped her notebook closed and stood. “Thank you for your time, Ms Lewis. I’ll be watching your progress with interest.”

Darcy stood too, hoping her hands weren’t shaking too visibly. Samir, still wide-eyed, gave her a thumbs-up that was less subtle that he thought it was - Darcy saw Christine’s eyes flicker in amusement. 

More sleep, that’s what Darcy needed. And much more media training, if they were going to throw people like Christine I’ve-taken-down-warlords-and-human-traffickers-and-State-Governors Everhart at her. She’d been lucky, following her instincts. Instinct wouldn’t cover everything. Not every journalist wanted to save the world; some of them would be quite happy to set bits of it on fire if they could sell pictures of the flames.

“By the way,” Christine said, as Darcy walked her to the door. “What’s your connection to those twins?”

Darcy’s pulse thudded in her ears. Rage scalded the back of her throat. But her voice came out as smooth as butter. “They’re family,” she said, and held the door open. “They’re not involved in Reach Out. Good night, Ms Everhart.”

“Good night, Ms Lewis,” Christine said, and strode away like a woman on a mission.

Darcy shut her door and leaned on the other side of it, eyes closed.

“Holy shit,” Samir breathed. “Uh, boss, you did great, but-“

“Don’t ask,” Darcy said. “I need to make a phone call, and it’s- Samir, God, it’s nearly eight pm on a Friday, and you’re working tomorrow. Go home. And make sure you bill us for the overtime.”

When she was sure he was gone, she sank into her chair. “Jarvis, call-“

“Miss Wanda is calling you now, Ms Lewis.”

Darcy grabbed at her phone, catching it before the first ring barely started. “Wanda, honey, are you-“

“You said everything right,” Wanda said, and her voice was filled with such warm certainty that Darcy let herself lean in to it for a moment.

“Do you know what I said?”

“Not exactly. I caught it while it was happening. A reporter asked about us, and whatever you said made her decide not to look further.” Wanda’s voice went dim, and a little distant. “If she’d looked… sometimes she dies. Sometimes we die. Sometimes they take us back”

The way she said it, the third option was clearly the worst.

“I told her you were my family,” Darcy said. 

“Oh,” Wanda said.

“You can go wherever you like. But no one is _taking_ you anywhere. Not ever again. Is Pietro there?”

“I’m listening,” Pietro said, his voice unsteady on the line. 

“Good. You’re both mine, okay? I promise. As long as you want.” 

“We want,” Wanda said. She was hiccuping a little.

Darcy scrubbed at her wet cheeks. “Wanda, I’m starving. Dinner?”

“Twenty minutes,” Wanda said. “Ten if Pietro helps chop.”

“I’ll help.”

“Okay, ten minutes. I’ll hold you to it.”

The floor was dark, a smattering of blue motion-sensor lights flicking on to guide her through the web of offices and cubicles. Reach Out was a 24 hour operation, but the night staff worked on the lower floors. Darcy felt the night settle around her as she walked through the empty corridors, her shoes whispering over the soft carpeting.

She caught it from the corner of her eye as she passed the law department and spun, the scream already rising from her throat before her brain could even recognise what she’d seen through the open office door.

The silhouette of a man outlined against the city lights, waiting for her in the dark.


	17. Chapter 17

“Lights, Jarvis!” Darcy yelled before the scream’s echo could stop bouncing off the wall. One hand was in her bag and the other was a fist, and she was already annoyed with herself for screaming. 

If she was murdered before she got to have sex with Clint, she was going to be really, _really_ annoyed.

Even as light flooded the office, she recognised the shape of the man in the dark office - the glasses, the suit, the erect posture - and felt embarrassment curdle in her stomach.

“It’s just me, Darcy,” Matt Murdock said through the door, his voice calm and clear. He wasn’t moving, his hands held just above his keyboard. Where she could see them, she realised, and know he wasn’t a threat. “It’s Matt.”

“Christ,” Darcy said, and pushed herself off the wall, slipping the taser back into her purse. “Shit. Sorry. Why are you working in the-“ She bit her tongue.

“I apologize, I should have thought,” Matt said. “I had Jarvis turn off the motion sensors in here.”

“You scared the shit out of me.”

“I really am sorry. It’s just habit; I’ve always worked with people who knew I worked in the dark.” His lips quirked. “And I’ve always had to worry about the power bill. Not really a concern for Reach Out, is it?”

“Is this actually better?” Darcy asked, and didn’t recognise the question was rude until she’d asked it. Exhaustion and adrenaline were buzzing under her skin, twisting every nerve and muscle. “The resources, I mean, the… reach.”

“Those parts are better.” Matt leaned back, stretching. “I miss working with my partner.”

“He could-“

“No. We talked about it. Someone needs to keep the office open for the people at home.” He stood, scooping his cane from its stand. “Jarvis, can you save there? We’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

“Certainly, Mr Murdock.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday, Matt,” Darcy said. “And we’ve got the gala at eight.”

Matt’s lips curled into that half-smile again. “So I won’t see you here in the morning, will I?”

“I’m rolling my eyes,” Darcy said, and fell in step beside him as he walked towards the elevator. She was settling back into her skin while they bantered, which was probably why Matt was doing it. It was the perfect time to press her luck. “I’m going to be nosy and ask if you’re bringing a date tomorrow night.”

Matt laughed. “I’m sort of married to my work.”

“Jennifer seems nice,” Darcy probed.

“Oh, Jen can do much better than me. How’s Clint doing?”

“Great. He’s working on a-“

The lights went out.

“Jarvis?” Darcy said, or tried to say, because suddenly Matt’s hand was over her mouth and he was swinging her off her feet and around and under until they were both crouching behind the receptionist’s desk facing the elevator.

“Three men coming,” Matt said in her ear, and took his hand away. “Up the elevator shaft. Armed.”

Now was not the time for questions like, “How do you know that?”. Darcy nodded against his shoulder, and pulled her taser out again, grabbing her phone with the other. She didn’t have much hope for it - men breaking into the Avengers building were clearly prepared - so the lack of bars failed to surprise her.

Men breaking into the Avengers building were also clearly suicidal. Tony had the penthouse, and Clint lived on her floor, and there was a fully armed security team on 24 hour watch, so even if you got in past Jarvis, getting out was going to be a trickier proposition. You’d have to have the right kind of mind, the steely kind of obsession that could dedicate itself to a vile cause in the sure knowledge that death was your only viable exit plan.

The Reach Out elevator shaft went all the way up. The twins were only a few floors above them.

Darcy tightened her grip on the taser and shifted her weight. _No one is taking you anywhere_ , she’d said.

When the elevator doors slid open on her floor, with a cool blue light, and the torches appeared, Darcy was, for a moment, relieved.

And then she was furious, because she was probably going to die, and she had so many plans that was totally going to ruin. She was practically unarmed, mostly untrained, and there were three of them, and she'd promised the twins she'd be home for dinner.

On the other hand, Matt had carried her to safety through the dark.

“Don’t move,” he whispered in her ear, and then vanished from her side like a freaking magician. Maybe he _was_ a magician.

“Her office,” one of the men said, in a voice with a slight accent. The torchlight cut up and down the corridors.

“Right down the back,” another man said, and Darcy stiffened, because that voice was one she’d heard before. She couldn’t place it, not exactly, but- “Bitch likes her view.”

 _Darrens_. That piece of shit. 

“Not there,” the third man said, after a brief pause.

“But she has not left the offices, so…“ The leader raised his voice. “Come out, Miss Lewis.” 

Darcy, crouched on the other side of the desk, had to firmly shove down the hysterical urge to reply, “There’s no need to shout, asshole, I’m right here.”

“We will not hurt you, Miss Lewis. We are impressed by you. Consider this a new job opportunity.”

Darcy’s lips curled back over her teeth.

The leader sighed. “On the other hand, Mr Darrens is no longer useful to us. Come out, or we will kill him.”

Darcy’s breath caught in her throat.

“Hey, wait a-“ Darrens said, and then he made a small, pained noise that was much scarier than a scream could ever be.

“No?” the leader said. “Oh well.”

“Shit, okay!” Darcy said, and banged her head on the desk in her haste to stand up. This was dumb. Super dumb. But she had time Darrens didn’t. Maybe Wanda's precognition would kick in and Pietro would appear. Maybe Jarvis would come back online and tell Tony something was up. “Look, I’m here, okay? Don’t kill him.”

“Are you sure?” the leader said. She couldn’t see him, with the torch light shining directly in her eyes, but he sounded affable. Pleased, even. _Good dog; nice trick._ “He was very eager to hand you over. No? Oh well. Good night, Mr Darrens.”

There was a sigh, and then the muffled sound of a body hitting the carpet. Darcy hoped that it was a breathing body, but hope was all she could do for him now. She stood rigidly in the spotlight’s gleam, her palms sweating.

“And now, Miss Lewis, please raise your hands.”

“Sure thing,” Darcy said, and slowly pulled her hands up from under the desk’s rim.

Her right one still held the taser. She shot it directly towards the light.

There was a shriek telling her the prongs had made contact, and then the gunfire started, but she’d dropped back below the desk and was rolling away, into the dark, away from the lights and the noise and the death that was coming for her as soon as the second guy took a second to think about what he was doing and-

“Help is on its way, Ms Lewis,” Jarvis said, very loudly, and then the bullets stopped and another body thumped to the ground.

“Lights, Jarvis,” Matt said. He sounded so calm. “Darcy? It’s safe.”

Somehow, Darcy had fetched up three cubicles back. She poked her head around the wall as the lights flickered back on. Matt was standing over three bodies, all of them big and bulky, one of them with her taser prongs still attached to his glove. Matt was yanking the clip out of a very serious gun with smooth, efficient motions. 

He was barely breathing heavily. His tie was slightly askew.

“What did you-“ she said, and then, “What the _hell_ , Matt?”

“Foggy told me not to work here,” Matt said, almost to himself, and then he straightened up and folded his hands on his head right before Tony and Clint came through the ceiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your lovely comments; they mean a great deal to me. 
> 
> I'm going to try for more regular updates, but as ever, no promises.


	18. Chapter 18

Darcy was getting really experienced at people trying to kill her, so she barely threw up at all before she went to the debriefing session in the penthouse. Matt sat with Pepper at the bar, both of their backs very straight. Pietro and Wanda sat on the couch. They all listened as Tony shouted at Bruce and Jarvis indiscriminately, wanting to know why people so smart hadn’t seen that he’d been stupid.

Exactly how the men had got in still wasn’t clear to Darcy. Tony had explained it to her as he’d shucked the Iron Man armor, the explanation interspersed with vicious cursing, but as far as she’d been concerned, he might as well have said, “EMP shitfucking Jarvis masking assface scram switch fuckweasels.”

She sat beside Clint, with her shoulder braced against his, and waited for the lull.

“And you-“ Tony said, whirling and pointing at Matt. “You… lawyering piece of-“

“Hey,” Darcy said. Not loudly, but loud enough to cut through the sound of Tony hauling in a deep breath to fuel the next diatribe. “The lawyering piece of saved my life.”

Clint squeezed her hand. Matt nodded politely in her direction. Tony scowled and shoved his sleeves up his forearms.

“Though I’d like to know how,” she added. “Do you have powers, Matt?”

Matt hesitated. “I don’t know if that’s what you’d call them,” he said. “I have… sensory awareness. I can use echolocation, though that’s hardly unique. I can hear much further than I should be able to, smell things that should be imperceptible to the human nose. I can feel the number of warm bodies in this room. I… put it together, and I know where things are. And I have some martial arts training, so-“

Clint, without changing expression, scooped a vase off the coffee table and threw it at his head.

Matt caught it in both hands and set it neatly on the counter. 

“That is an _Elizabeth Rie_ ,” Wanda said, into the ringing silence. Then she flushed up to the roots of her hair, as scarlet as the name she’d chosen.

“Good eye,” Pepper murmured.

“The glaze is smooth, and there are no flaws in the clay,” Matt said. “But I can’t tell you what color it is.”

“And that’s how you took out two guys?” Darcy asked.

He smiled in her direction. “One and a half. The leader wasn’t much of a problem once you tasered him.”

“Where are they?” Pietro asked. It was the first time he’d spoken.

Tony slanted a look at him. “They’re being questioned.”

Pietro was doing that stutter-vibrate thing again, and Darcy would have spared an anxious thought for what he might do, except Wanda looked pretty calm. “I asked you-”

“Who’s on it?” Clint said over top of him. He was looking at Tony. He could be completely unaware that he’d interrupted Pietro, but he was squeezing Darcy’s hand.

Tony shrugged. “Hill.”

“Good,” Clint said.

“Wait,” Darcy said. “Maria Hill? _Deputy Director_ of SHIELD Maria Hill?”

Pepper and Tony looked at each other in their borderline psychic way. “I brought her on board,” Tony said. “For the Avengers’ Initiative.”

Darcy’s head was throbbing. She should have drunk more water after she’d thrown up. “You brought Maria Hill on board.”

She’d read Maria Hill’s file. It had taken a while.

Maria Hill had ordered a lot of files be kept for SHIELD.

Pepper’s eyes were so warm. “Darcy, with SHIELD gone, the Avengers need someone who can coordinate-“

“No, you know what, this is none of my business,” Darcy said, and stood up, letting go of Clint’s hand. “I mean… my business is Reach Out. That’s my thing. You do you, okay, guys? Go… save the world, coordinate your data, whatever.”

“Lewis, hey, we can-” Tony said, but she threw up her hand and he stopped.

“I don’t work for you,” she said. “And you don’t work for me. I get shot at, you question the shooters, that’s how it goes. It’s fine. I just… forgot. You kind of gather people in, Tony.”

Tony shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, well. It’s my charm.” He shot Pepper another glance; she looked back, inscrutable, and half-opened her hand. After a second he turned back to Bruce, talking with him at a much lower volume. 

Darcy looked at the face she’d been avoiding.

Clint wasn’t looking at her. He was rubbing a circle in his jeans with his thumb, around and around. The tips of his ears were red. A dark line of stubble was coming in at his jaw.

She’d just said that his job wasn’t any of her business. She’d erected a barrier between what she did, and what he did.

She’d been right to do it, but, oh, she hoped it wouldn’t ruin them.

He glanced up at her then, and smiled uncertainly, and she felt her knees go a little wobbly. Okay. Okay, that was all right.

“I still haven't had dinner. Got enough ingredients to make something for four?” she asked Wanda.

Pietro snorted. “Dinner for _twelve_ ,” he muttered, and looked affronted when his sister poked his ribs. “I’ll get it started.” He zipped off.

“He’s going to char the onions,” Wanda said, her eyes glowing pink-red. “I always tell him, the pan’s too hot!” She stalked towards the door.

“I assume I can leave?” Matt asked, and slipped off his stool. Darcy watched him walk towards them. Smooth, and connected, no hesitation. But now that she thought about it, he’d always moved like that. People must just look at the cane and the glasses and make their own assumptions. Put a picture together.

Darcy didn’t have the emotional energy left to be ashamed, but she recognised mild embarrassment when she felt it.

“Hey, Matt,” she said. “Do you want a car to take you home?”

“That won’t be necessary. Darcy, perhaps I don’t need to say this, but if you’d like me to offer my resignation-“

“What? No.”

His jaw lost some tension. 

“Not a _chance_ ,” Darcy said. “I mean, even if I was that stupid and ungrateful, the project really needs you. Oh man, the gala’s in less than 24 hours and I still have so much to- what? Why is everyone looking at me?” Tony and Bruce had broken off their conversation to gawk at her, and even Matt looked slightly taken aback.

“Were you planning to go ahead with the gala?” Pepper asked, with the special intonation that meant _You weren’t planning to go ahead with the gala._

“It’s pre-planned,” Darcy said, with an intonation of her own. “It’s happening.”

“The security risk might be-“ Clint said, and then grinned at her. “Yeah, screw it.“

Darcy thought her own smile might permanently crease her cheeks.

“I’ll run security,” he added, presumably for Pepper’s benefit.

“No, you won’t,” Darcy said. “You’re arm candy, remember? You can protect me from reporters and any employees who take the open bar as an opportunity to complain about my management style. That’s the plan.”

Tony slapped Bruce on the shoulder. “It’s a good plan. Don’t you love a good plan, Bruce?”

“I-“

“It’s okay, you can duck out early, everyone knows you hate crowds.”

Pepper was still frowning, but Tony tucked her hand into his elbow and patted it.

“We’ve got to be there, Pepper,” Darcy said, holding eye contact. “In our best dresses and make up, with the shiniest lights and the biggest smiles, reaching out to the world.”

Pepper deliberately blinked and looked down. “Well,” she said. “It is a _very_ nice dress.”

 

On the way down the elevator, Clint kissed Darcy so thoroughly that she was breathless by the time he pulled away and rested his forehead on hers, his hands still framing her face. “I need to buy Matt Murdock a beer,” he said, his voice too loud for the tight space.

“Whiskey,” Darcy said. “I’m buying him whiskey. Jen will know the brand.” She hit the close door button and kissed him again, a slow, deliberate burn.

“Sorry I couldn’t tell you about Hill,” Clint said, when they broke apart again to breathe. Not sorry that he _hadn’t_ told her, but sorry that he couldn’t. That worked.

“Your job,” Darcy said. “And you don’t do security for me, okay? I let you consult unofficially, and I shouldn't have. We kind of… we mixed things together too much.”

Clint closed his eyes, but his gaze was steady when he opened them again. “Deal.”

She wiped her lipstick off his mouth with her fingers, smiling when he nipped at her thumb. 

“It’s not as if they won’t be able to guess,” Clint said.

“Yeah, but we don’t need to put on a show, either. There.” She hit the open button and stepped into the hallway, her fingers curling around Clint’s as she tugged him out. His gaze went over her shoulder, his goofy smile freezing.

Darcy was already turning before he spoke. 

She met the calm eyes of the woman waiting for them across the hall. Some part of her wasn’t even surprised.

“Natasha,” Clint said, and Darcy’s hand leapt out of his, curling of its own accord into a fist.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Not in love with you yet (but the odds are in your favor)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1765438) by [amusewithaview](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview)




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